PDD is one department always in news, right or wrong. Every time its woes are pronounced and its profile made gloomier, it refuses to change; it refuses to respond to the public protests and it refuses to introduce novelty in any aspect of power supply. The net result is that our power position is sliding downwards with each passing year.
The main question is of providing electric power to the people whether in cities or in towns and villages. Some years ago, the PDD came out with a strong plea for introducing meters to check pilferage of power. We were told that once metering was done in Jammu city, we would save lots of power from getting pilfered. Unsuspecting masses believed in what PDD promised. With that began the much trumpeted project of metering private consumers and others. This process has been going on by fits and starts. PDD selected localities at random and despatched teams to do the job of installing meters and its related things.
PDD launched widespread campaign of impressing upon the citizens to cooperate and even volunteer for installation of electric meters. The strong plea was that it was a very effective way of checking pilferage of electric power. People responded enthusiastically and many localities got metered. But somehow the PDD stopped metering half way and left thousands of consumers unmetered. But with the shortage of supply of electric power always on increase, the PDD decided to revive metering. This time the experience was something different. The project for 2015-16 before the PDD is that about 6, 12,239 units of consumers would be metered. As the process started, it soon got bogged with the problem of supply and installation of meters Therefore it outsourced the project meaning that a third party would be engaged for providing meters and installing them under proper scheme. Thrice did the PDD float the tenders but drew a blank. Finally two bidders were in the run. Serious discrepancy in the cost quoted by one of the bidders who happens to be the producer/manufacturer in comparison to the second one created many doubts in the mind of PDD authorities and they have withheld the process of metering in the region.
This is the outline story about metering by PDD. But to all its dilly dallying tactics there is something more interesting to add. It is now averring that metering of rural areas and especially far flung areas would not be possible and perhaps it has dropped that part of the metering project altogether. What does it mean? Does the PDD want to leave the loophole for both the field staff and the consumers to play tricks with the civil society? Again it is strange that the PDD is not able to find a bidder for last two or three years who would offer to take up the job of metering. Obviously there must be some conditions too complicated for the bidders to accept. In a vast country like ours, it is unimaginable that the PDD is not able to strike bargain with a bidder. The committee entrusted with examining the tenders should first of all ensure that the terms of the bid are rational and workable. Otherwise tendering and re-tendering process will continue without limit and then nothing will happen, metering will be frozen and load shedding will become more frequent and people already groaning under arbitrary decisions and actions of the PDD will be forced to come on the streets. This is no way of good governance.
PDD is beset with many woes. It has become the white elephant for the state and nobody is seriously thinking how this big roadblock in the path of meeting the requirements of the public can be removed. The common grievance of the people is that despite repeated announcement of the government that metered areas would not be subjected to power cuts and if it become unavoidable under special circumstances, the metered areas would be give a time schedule of load shedding exercise. But on the ground the situation is absolutely the reverse of it. In areas that are fully metered, frequent power cuts have become a daily routine. We know of some areas where 100 per cent metering has bee done yet there is power cut every hour which remain in force for two hours at a stretch. Repeated appeals by the people bear no fruit in case the localities under reference do not have a VVIP or an important political leader among its denizens. This is the ground situation and the PDD is mired in tendering and retendering for meters. If even after metering the condition is what has been stated, what is the fun of planning to install meters to over 6 lakh consumer units? Why should not PDD first streamline power supply to localities already metered and then go out to reach the non-metered populace.
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