3/4 hours of power supply a day : Poke the public to rise
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: March 05, 2012 -

It is time to take to the street or more importantly time to wake up the public, with a poke where it matters. Three hours of power supply in a day of 24 hours is pathetic enough but what is more unacceptable is the arrogant indifference of the authority concerned, read the Power Department and the men helming this important institution, to the joke of a system in vogue.

The time has come to turn the 'public failing to pay their power tariff' argument on its head and turn it into 'the Electricity Department failing in its duty to collect power tariff sincerely and effectively from the consumers.'

There is something called the tolerance limit and the meek, quiet and submissive stance of the public is something which would astound anyone, especially given the fact that this is happening in a land, where a bandh or a blockade can be called at the drop of the hat and JACs are a dime a dozen.

Where have all those who fly their flags high on the pole of public interest disappeared to ? It is not that all the thinking section of the public have been maintaining a stoic silence.

A PIL has already been filed by three personalities of the State against the abject failure of the Power Department to discharge with their primary duty. This was in 2010.

Nearly two years down the line and only God seems to know what has happened to that PIL. Information sought by a young social worker by invoking the Right to Information Act some time back has exposed more skeletons than record/files of the Electricity Department.

The social media such as Facebook is awash with comments from well meaning citizens on the pathetic power supply in the State, with some even raising some important points.

As one young doctor put it, 'If a private undertaking like the ISTV can collect taxes from the public, how does one explain the failure of the Electricity Department to do the same ?'

This question throws open the possibility of organising a fruitful discourse on whether privatising the Power sector would be for the betterment of all or not.

The door to a debate or a discussion in the public domain has been opened and with the Power Department failing to even acknowledge that everything that can go wrong has gone wrong, the time to prod the public with a good poke is something which the doctors may just prescribe.

How unprofessional are the guys at the Electricity Department can be gauged from the very fact that there is no system of levying the power tariff according to the power consumed.

A monthly slab is the system they have resorted to and this is nothing but a pathetic attempt at side stepping the issue of something as basic as installing the metre reader at all the houses which have power connection.

This also means that the consumers have to cough up money for the days when there are no power supply at all and at a modest estimation, there must be more than three/four leikais in Imphal alone which have not been receiving any power supply for the last 10/15 days or even months because the transformer has broken down.

And to think that the Power Department is talking about installing pre-paid metre system and the joke of it all gets that more bitter. Corruption, financial bungling, deliberately or otherwise is again something which cannot be written off entirely.

When the capital of the State receives power supply for only three/four hours a day, then the situation in the hill districts and the other districts can only be imagined. In such a state, does the presence of a Power Minister, that too a Cabinet rank Minister, serve any purpose at all ?

The abject failure of the Electricity Department to dispense with its basic duty is symptomatic of the general rot that has besieged the State for decades. The Khuga Multi-Purpose Project will perhaps enter the record book for being a multi-purpose project without the power component.

And to think that this was inaugurated by none less than UPA Chairperson, Sonia Gandhi is damning statement on how the State Government can go to any length to fool the public.

Something has to give and with indifference becoming the defining statement of the Government, it is the public who need to rise to the situation.