Jammu, May 26: Shortage of funds has made the sophisticated lab for technical back-up of e-meters non-functional for last four years.

Sources said that valuable equipments brought by the Power Development Department (PDD) are gathering dust at the Bhagwati Nagar, Jammu, office.
Though officials claim that before purchasing the meters are tested by the supplier but in case of any problem people have nowhere to go as the only government establishment to test and repair such equipments is non-functional.

“There are no funds to run the lab, which was functional only for six months. At the moment people have to approach the Government College for Engineering and Technology (GCET) in case they have any doubt about functioning of the meters installed at their residential or commercial establishments”, officials said.

They added that before the instrument is installed, it has to be tested to provide correct reading so that consumer and department are not put to loss.

“At the moment most of the meters are being installed without any test and there have been cases when people come to us with complaints of excess reading. However we are unable to provide any help at this stage due to the non-availability of laboratory”, said an official.

Sources said that at the time when government is claiming to bring transparency and increase revenue collection there is fundamental flaw in its planning which is main reason for the failure of ambitious e-metering project.

Chief Engineer PDD, Shenaz Goni said that a new proposal has been formulated to create proper infrastructure for the testing and repair of electronic meters in the state. “We are upgrading the existing lab and in coming months it will be made functional to ratify any technical flaw after the installation of the meters”, Goni said.

This is not the only case when the department has not been able to utilize its technical resources. Nearly 5000 Meter Reading Instruments (MRI), brought under the Accelerated Power Development Reforms Programme (APDRP) to check the tempering with e-meters, have not been used as department did not train its staff to handle them.

According to sources most of the MRIs have been dumped in the stores while the personnel rely on the manual method to register meter reading, which leaves field open for wrong bills and in some cases allow the people to bribe the staff engaged in revenue recovery.

So far nearly seven lakh e-meters have been installed in Jammu and Kashmir since the power reforms were initiated by the state government after intense pressure from the central government and Northern Grid.

The aim of the reforms was to check the misuse of electricity and make revenue recovery a norm among the people.

The process of installing the e-meters was started in 2005 by the then Mufti Muhammad Sayeed led PDP-Congress government and a set up was created to provide services to the people and ensure that the project is able to curb power theft.

Lastupdate on : Thu, 26 May 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Thu, 26 May 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Fri, 27 May 2011 00:00:00 IST