Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), which has been blamed for not providing evidence of the bills for supplying electricity to the industries through the dedicated feeder and trunk lines during the time of load shedding, submitted long details including reports of the Time of Day (TOD) meter to the parliamentary Public Account Committee (PAC) on Thursday.

NEA Managing Director Kulman Ghising said they submitted 100,000 pages long details of electricity bills including the TOD data, log book and discounts provided to the manufacturers to the PAC. “We have downloaded all the records as asked by the parliamentary committee and submitted the details to the panel,” he said.

Ekram Giri, secretary of the PAC, also confirmed the NEA’s submission of the report. According to him, the power utility has submitted 37 packets of TOD details to the parliamentary committee.

Industrialists concerned have been blaming the NEA for issuing bills of dedicated feeders and trunk lines without having evidence of the TOD meters. The PAC through its meeting last Friday directed the NEA to provide data related to the TOD meters.

Citing power outage issues, the NEA, in 2015, enforced the rule to impose additional fees on industries that consume lots of energy through the dedicated feeder and trunk lines during the period of load shedding. The NEA had charged 65 percent as premium charge for the users of dedicated feeders and trunk lines on top of the normal tariff.

Under the dedicated feeder service, a factory that needed a high voltage line was permitted to receive direct electricity from a nearby substation, while those using trunk lines were provided with regular electricity directly through two substations.

The NEA has sought to recover total dues of Rs 6.60 billion from 61 manufacturing companies that used the facility nine years ago. The authority was dragged into controversy after it recently disconnected electricity supply lines to six of these companies.

The PAC on the other hand claimed that the manufacturers who used dedicated feeders and trunk lines owe electricity bills of Rs 21.88 billion to the state-owned power utility. However, the Electricity Tariff Dispute Resolution Commission headed by former SC Justice Girish Chandra Lal had recommended the NEA to charge only Rs 6.41 billion for the outstanding electricity tariff from mid-January 2016 to mid-May 2018 in addition to a 25 percent fine. The commission argued that it would not be practical to charge the same rate to the industries for using electricity after the end of load shedding.

Source: Republica