Lucknow: After announcing dedicated police stations to register complaints related to power theft, the UP government is now toying with the idea of shaming non-performing power engineers by displaying their photographs in the offices of distribution companies and electricity substations.
Sources said that the idea was recently mooted at a high-level review meeting chaired by energy minister Shrikant Sharma and attended by UPPCL chairman Alok Kumar and other senior officials. Sources said that Sharma was irked over high line losses in the divisions of some districts. "Warning has already been issued to under-performing engineers," said a senior UPPCL official.
The photographs of under-performing chief engineers and superintending engineers will be pasted in the office of distribution companies, while those of executive engineers, assistant engineers and junior engineers will be put up in substations.
When contacted, Sharma said that it was not just about shaming engineers. "Engineers having good performance will be rewarded," he told TOI. He said that despite carrying out drives, line losses in some of the divisions have been not satisfactory. "The state government is committed to provide round-the-clock power supply. But that is not possible until power pilferage is stopped and lines losses brought down significantly," he said.
According to UPPCL records, the line loss average in the state is around 30%, which is almost double the benchmark set by the Centre. Union power minister RK Singh had also pointed out the high line losses in the state during a recent review meeting.
The UP government move to get cracking on non-performing engineers comes after it decided to deploy at least two vigilance teams in every district. The state government, Sharma said, has also initiated feeder-wise monitoring to account line losses. "This is being done to recover revenue," he said. The state government has also sought deployment of GPS-enabled bill collection vans in rural areas.