02 November 2011 | merinews.com
Dahiya elected President of Haryana Power Engineers Association

V K Gupta

02 November, 2011
The AGM of Haryana Power Engineers Association (HPEA) elected new 15 member executive committee for a two-year term. R S Dahiya and Daljit Singh were elected President and General Secretary of in the annual general body meeting held on Tuesday at Panipat.
THE GENERAL body meeting was presided over by Padamjit Singh Chairman All India Power Engineers Federation and was attended by more than 300 engineers. The other elected office bearers of Association are K K Malik, Sr. Vice president, S K Singh, Vice president, Kabul Singh Finance secretary, Rohtash Kaushik, Secretary Publication, and N K Makkar, Joint Secretary.

Share “The reforms in the power sector have failed as the power utilities across the country has been captured and hijacked by bureaucrats,” said Padamjit Singh. The main purpose of power sector reforms was to bring financial viability to the power utilities and here Haryana has failed miserably on this front. This is the policy failure on part of Haryana government and working of power utilities is worse than Public Works Department. The non-professional management of power utilities is the main reason for reforms failure in Haryana.

Singh further said as the loans and losses have increased tremendously the government may give distribution of power in industrial cities to private franchisees. The introduction of franchisee system in power sector if not beneficial for state, consumers and employees.

Daljit Singh General Secretary of association said that losses of power utilities have increased to Rs. 7100 crore and loans have touched Rs. 15268 crore. The banks have refused further loans to utilities. The defaulting amount of distribution companies is Rs. 2100 crore. Now Discoms are taking short term loan of Rs. 1000 crore from HUDA. The cash deficit of Discoms is Rs. 400 crore per month. Both Discoms owe Rs. 2750 crore to HPGCL for power purchase and Rs. 375 crore to HVPN as wheeling charges.

R S Dahiya President of Association that service conditions of power engineers which used to be best in region is now not even satisfactory. The pay scales of engineers should be brought at par with those of power engineers with utilities of region.

Dahiya said that the three has been manifold increase in power generation capacity of state, number of consumers but no restructuring of Discoms has been done. The number of employees have come down to 23000 from 56000. At the instance of Power Minister the MD’s of Discoms submitted proposal to restructure their utilities but financial commissioner power has shelved the proposal citing poor financial health of Discoms.

There are 4 posts of Directors lying vacant and government seems to be not in a hurry to fill the posts. The posts of Directors are kept vacant deliberately to favor individuals and to stop the promotions of engineers.