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Prime Minister Bhattarai Approves Rise In Electricity Tariff
By KTM Metro Reporter
December 22, 2011: the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) is set to increase the electricity tariff by 20 percent from the next month to offset the annual loss of Rs 7 billion; Prime minister Dr. Baburam Bhattarai has approved the rise in the electricity tariff, ‘gorkhapatra’ of today reports.
Giving approval to the NEA to increase the electricity tariff at the time when the country has the power outage of ten hours a day, Prime Minister Bhattarai has shown his incompetence in managing the state owned corporations. He should have ordered the NEA to remove the corrupt practices going on at the NEA, stop giving free power to its staffs, and utilize the staffs efficiently in order to reduce the power leakage rather than agreeing on increasing the electricity tariff.
Currently, the NEA is losing about 45 per cent of power generated. It has been entirely due to the incompetent NEA management. The management has failed to improve the transmission lines to reduce the transmission loss, and also has been unable to stop the power theft, although the NEA staffs know how the customers steal power.
Prime Minister Dr. Bhattarai has approved to put the burden of the inefficient NEA management on power consumers increasing the electricity tariff. It shows that Dr. Bhattarai could not make a difference in the NEA management.
The NEA claims that the rise in electricity would reduce the power outage. It would be true if the NEA has built a number of thermal plants to mitigate the power shortage. It could justify the rise in power price, as the cost of production of power generated by diesel plants would be higher than the hydropower. However, the government is not in a hurry to install thermal power plants.
After the few months, the NEA would increase the power outage to 20 hours a day keeping the Nepalis in total darkness. However, the consumers would need to pay 20 per cent more for the power they would have for four hours a day. Shame on the coalition government in general and on Prime Minister Bhattarai in particular.
If Prime Minister Bhattarai wants to be a prime minister with different managerial capacity then he needs to revoke the approval given to the NEA on increasing the electricity tariff and immediately improve the NEA management stopping the power and financial leakages and corruption at the NEA, and stop the NEA from continuing the free distribution of power to its staffs. Such actions would reduce the annual loss of the NEA; and the consumers would have power uninterrupted.
Reviewing the proposal for setting up thermal plants for generating 100 MW submitted by the Minister for Energy to immediately mitigate the power shortage, the Public Account Committee (PAC) of the House in its meeting held on December 23, 2011 has instructed the Minister for Energy Posta Bahadur Bogati to study the generation of other possible energy other than generation from the thermal plants within seven days according to the news aired by the Radio Nepal on the morning of December 24, 2011. It indicates that the members of the PAC are really inept, as Nepal has no other alternative to immediately either import power from India or to build thermal plants to minimize the power outage that has been plaguing Nepal for such a long time causing sluggish economic and business development in Nepal. The PAC should immediately approve the proposal for building thermal plants if these guys are for making Nepal prosperous. The price of generating power from thermal plants is number of times higher than generating from hydropower plants but the price Nepalese people are paying for not having power is hundreds of times more than the price of power from the thermal plants, the PAC guys would find it if they think a little bit logically.
Former Prime Minister Prachanda was for setting up 200 MW thermal plants but the most incompetent leaders of the CPN-UML had stopped him from building thermal plants stating the price of power generation from the thermal plants would be high consequently making Nepalis to suffer from the heavy power outage today.
Updated on December 24, 2011
