THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Comptroller and Auditor General report on the Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana (UDAY) scheme which was tabled in the assembly on Tuesday, has severely criticised the KSEB for its faulty implementation.The report states that the monitoring and implementation of the scheme have been found inadequate during UDAY and post-UDAY periods as the KSEB failed to curtail employee and power-purchase costs.
The UDAY scheme was launched by the Centre in 2015 to ensure the financial turnaround of power distribution companies that have been facing a huge losses. The CAG report states that the KSEB had not considered the liabilities towards pension payments and pay revision of its employees. Moreover, the Board could not reap the full benefit of the scheme by deciding to opt out of the financial turnaround package.
This led to continuous losses in the KSEB’s operationnetwork during 2015 - 21. “The Board did not devise key performance indicators on areas of aggregate technical and commercial loss and metering/billing/collection efficiencies as envisaged in the MoU on UDAY scheme,” says the CAG report. But a KSEB official pointed out that the objective of the UDAY scheme could not be achieved across the country due to the pandemic. It should be recalled that the consumers were given a grace period of two billing cycles of four months to pay their dues.
“KSEB was made a company in 2013. But it took another four years to get IT exemption for it. It was the employee’s contribution which was being given as pension to retired employees before the Board was converted into a company. Post 2013, the pension amount was going to the National Pension System Trust which saw the liability of the Board going up,” said a senior KSEB official.
The CAG has recommended the state government to fully analyse the UDAY scheme and take advantage of all its provisions as the scheme has crucial financial and operational implications.