Failing to comply with the directions of Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission (JERC), the Chandigarh Electricity Department (CED) has once again failed to submit the status report regarding consumer metering, reading and billing process in the city.
Taking a serious view of non-compliance of its orders regarding regulations on consumer metering, reading and billing, the JERC has asked the UT Administration to submit detailed and complete action plan by upto December 31, 2014 or before February 9, 2015.In its orders issued on Wednesday, the JERC directed the UT Administration to make sincere efforts to replace all defective mechanical/electronic meters and working mechanical meters at the earliest.
As per an affidavit submitted by the UT Administration to JERC in November, the meters of around 6,494 consumers are not working while 33,738 mechanical meters are yet to be replaced in Chandigarh.In all, there are more than two lakh consumers in the union territory of Chandigarh.Taking suo moto notice of CED for not complying with JERC Regulations 2010 on meter reading and billing, the Commission had in 2012 issued orders to CED to replace the non-working meters and also submit a report, action plan and roadmap on replacing mechanical meters with electronic meters in a phased manner.
At present, the Chandigarh Electricity Department is struggling to cut down its transmission losses, which stands at 15.50 per cent.As per an earlier affidavit submitted before the Commission, the present transmission and distribution losses of the Department stands at 15.50 per cent, which it aims to bring down to 15 per cent in the current year. The CED has set a target of reduction of the losses to 14.50 per cent in 2015-16 and to 14 per cent by 2016-17.