Taking a serious note of delay in providing electricity connections to the applicants, Uttarakhand Electricity Regulatory Commission (UERC) has slapped penalty worth Rs4.78 lakh on two engineers posted at Roorkee in Haridwar district. However, Uttarakhand Power Engineers Association’s general secretary Anil Kumar Mishra flayed the penalty imposed on the engineers and said that engineers in the power department are working under acute shortage of manpower and facilities. “How can it be expected that the engineers would complete cent per cent works when they have to take enormous pressure thanks to the staff crunchIJ First, these problems should be sorted out and then the question of slapping penalty comes,” he said.
Power department sources said that this penalty amount would be recovered from the salaries of the engineers concerned or else Uttarakhand Power Corporation limited (UPCl) itself would bear such penalties. The engineers on whom penalty has been slapped are SDO, landhaura, Ompal and SDO Manglaur Amit Saxena.
A department official said that the two UPCl engineers had not provided electricity connections to more than dozen applicants within the stipulated time. “Thirty days are fixed for providing electricity connection for lT (low tension) wires while two months are given for separate power supply lines connection. Three months are fixed for installing separate transformer to provide power connection. These engineers did not provide lT wire connection to several applicants in one month. We acted after the applicants registered complaints with Uttarakhand Power Regularity Commission. An investigation was conducted and the complaints were found correct. Hence the penalties slapped on the erring engineers,” the officer said, adding that the penalty amount would be collected in maximum one year from the engineers concerned.
It is learnt that on the recommendation of UERC, executive engineer Power distribution Block Rural, Roorkee Ashutosh Tiwari has ordered the penalties to be recovered from the two engineers.