Staff Reporter
DIMAPUR, DECEMBER 1
The State Electricity Department today entered into a new chapter by introducing pre-paid meters for electricity consumers. The ‘pre-paid system’ or ‘electricity prepayment system’ is the first of its kind in the State and has been introduced to bring about reforms in the power sector and to reduce the Aggregate Technical & Commercial (AT&C) losses as the State continues to reel under heavy AT&C losses to the tune of 60 percent.
The pilot project of the pre-paid system was launched this morning by Parliamentary Secretary for Power, Kipili Sangtam at Marwari Patti in Dimapur.
The first pre-paid meter was installed at the residence of Lt Madanlal Sethi, one of the first Marwari settlers in Dimapur, and subsequently at Jain Temple.
The project will be carried out in two phase wherein a total of 702 consumers in Marwari Patti area have been metered for the first phase. In the second phase, 200 consumers will be metered. Once this is successful, the concerned department has the plan to scale it up it up to other parts of the State in an extensive way.
Commissioning the pre-paid meters, the Parliamentary Secretary for Power, Kipili Sangtam underlined the initiative as a historic venture for the State and particularly the Power department.
“This is a new chapter in the history of the Power department. We have tried in many ways how and where to go about to improve the billing system. And lastly we decided to go this way. So let us propagate the importance of this newly introduced pre-paid system to the rest of the people,” Sangtam said and further appealed for the collective responsibility from the public in order to make the system more effective and workable.
He also appealed the public for careful handling of power usage as he feared that continued ignorance will deepen the crisis we are facing now. Making his observation known that our people lacks discipline when it comes to ‘paying bills’, the Parliamentary Secretary also urged the public to be more responsible citizens.
The programme was chaired by Commissioner & Secretary Power, while the closing remarks were delivered by Er Imlikumzuk Ao, Addl Chief Engineer Power. A brief introduction of the payment system was presented by Er Yiese, Suptt Engineer Power.
