Shiban Khaibri
It must be every body’s innate desire to see our Power Development Department performing reasonably professionally to the benefit of the Aam Aadmi who feels being grossly neglected and perhaps deliberately made to sweat, fret, fume and ultimately suffer, the rigours of which are being increasingly felt in this scorching summer. A state which boasts of being a power surplus state by 2018 is not in a position to provide electric power to consumers for even half the time during 24 hours of its expected uninterrupted supply at least to those with electronic metering.
We can only rue over the state of affairs of the power department when it surfaces that nearly 6.25 lac consumers use electricity without paying for it and those who pay have to undergo the torture of braving very frequent power cuts irrespective of day or night. Not only are these “privileged consumers” the number of whom could surely be more, reportedly not paying for what they use but how much they use, is put to any body’s speculations. How long and how much in terms of revenue has been this loot of the public exchequer going on, must be thoroughly probed and accountability fixed and recovered from those held responsible for this merciless loot. Those who are supposed to protect the interests of the department, in other words that of the public at large, appear to be ” ignorant” of this organized and perpetual loot of the precious power and thus are brazenly violating the tenets of the code of public servants and the service rules which impliedly bind a public servant to remain loyal to the organization and act as its watch dog. The sufferers on account of this avoidable and ruthlessly controllable malaise of theft have to adopt measures like frequently taking to streets and demonstrations to make the concerned authorities listen and correct the afflicted system but of no perceptible avail. These authorities have thus been criminally adopting a mute response to what should have caused them to act to redeem the system in a major way. They have, by their actions, failed to bring home to the consumers that buying services and goods have got to be paid and paid in time and not paying for the electricity is tantamount to visiting a departmental store and picking up things and leaving without paying the bill. In short, the department has done nothing in enforcing a paying culture, perhaps because of host of reasons. What are the problems that virtually seem to have overtaken the power department appear to have been not specifically identified and thus addressed or despite being identified are made hostage to political and bureaucratic maneuverings.
Much hyped voluntary disclosure of electricity load is not going to solve any problem instead going in for pole metering or fixing meters at a place which could make it very difficult to be tampered with or falsified with intent to rob the department of the cost of supplying of power, can redeem the situation. Consume and pay as per meter reading, should be the guiding principle, the commercial premise on which revenue recovery targets can be fixed and allocated to the employees and personnel of other designated agencies engaged or recruited exclusively for this purpose.
Let us underline the role and the importance of staff in whole gamut of the hard core issues and look at the problems of the staff right from the bottom level. It is a thing to be believed that most of the linemen are engaged on daily wage basis and paid a meager wage of Rs.120 per day. Not only that, they are reported to be not getting those wages also for months together. They are not properly trained and as raw hands are asked to handle the field duty and “learn” by hits and trials. Recently a young daily wager lineman lost his life while mending electric wires at Purani Mandi, Jammu. Was he properly trained and authorized by a competent professional authority to be a qualified trained person designated as a line man or a foreman whatever, to fiddle with electric lines on the electric pole? As is wont with our system, a “probe has been ordered” and that absolves all concerned of accountability and responsibility. Can an employee make both ends meet with just Rs.3600 per month and remain very honest and committed to his “job”? The line man being in direct contact with the ultimate destination of power generation, distribution and supply – the consumer- can play a wonderful part in generating and ensuring revenues for the department in case he is paid adequately reasonably and in time, is properly trained, groomed and rewarded for better performance so as to become a committed and a dedicated part of a work force. In the absence of this procedure, is not the prevailing system inducing him and other associated employees to resort to unfair means eating into the revenue earning network? What is the recruitment and transfer policy of the Power Development department? Why are there no replacements by way of fresh appointments against those who attained superannuation when the area of operation is constantly increasing and likewise the commensurate need for more staff? Why are not even those daily wagers with a service of as much as 7 to 10 years regularized and instead pushed to resort to protests and agitations? We are often discussing the extraneous issues while appraising the performance of PDD and not the ones which are intrinsic. Is there any thing called human resources development (HRD) any where to be seen in this department and what is the extent of investment of the department albeit the government in terms of recognizing and developing the human resources potential and talents which is very important to have a committed work force to ensure not only a complete turnaround of the department but take it towards innovative modernization.
We know growth of an organization is deeply linked with the development of its work force. PDD is not a government department in the sense of dealing with office files only but a commercial organization and for any such organization, the cardinal principal is to make profits of its sales or to wind up. We are tired of hearing that the revenues are not forthcoming even remotely from the consumers in relation to the cost of the supply of power. Where are the bottlenecks and the problems specific? Let us make a departure from the conventional approach and underline the tremendous role the work force of this department could play in this regard and for that the importance of the workforce has got to be understood. You may bring in any remedial measures; they shall succeed only when the workforce, the field staff, the professionals, the executives all combined resolutely cooperate and put in their best. The importance of HRD has got to be understood and percolated down the ranks of all cadres of employees, it may sound in the short run not that very essential but within a short span, its need and implementation shall be felt and found out most rewarding. It will improve the efficiency of the employees, result in better coordination and communication and develop mutual cooperation. This will help the employees know their strengths and weaknesses and enable them to improve their performance. The management or the top executive hierarchy should provide adequate opportunities for the development of human resources development. This shall practically and decidedly not theoretically, underline the importance of a line man, a foreman, a supervisor, a meter reading official, an inspector, a revenue official, including technical and other professional personnel who shall get emotionally, professionally and ethically attached with the organization and help in clearing the mess and mismanagement in the system . A work culture, a fear of accountability and shouldering of responsibility shall usher in as we know the bane of almost all ills in the administrative and political systems is the deficit of accountability and sharing responsibility. Do reward honesty, hard work, and dedication to duty, punctuality and fulfilling of targets and punish non performance, recklessness, promoters of dishonest and unfair means and causing loss to the organization and the public money. It may be impressed upon that unless all the employees irrespective of their cadre, feel a sense of belongingness and dedication, PDD or any organization shall never see improvement in the system and registering increase in revenue earnings. A line man engaged as a daily wager, as untrained, unprotected in case of exigencies, without any guarantee of regularization, let alone any future in career prospects, under the pretext of a defective SRO or the parroted “no funds,” speaks about the stinking system when compared with the announcement in the Assembly in the budget session this year about earmarking of Rs.9 crores for purchasing new cars for our legislators. Luxury of new cars could wait but not the timely payment of wages of the daily wager line man. Not attending to priorities in order of urgencies is uncalled for, unwarranted and criminal wastage of scarce resources; power department cannot be an exception.
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