Correspondent
KOHIMA, NOVEMBER 22
PUTTING its foot down on rampant electricity theft in the state capital, the Power department Kohima, in collaboration with the district police, is conducting a series of raids at various locations across the town on illegal power connections. Barely four days into the operation on Friday, the department’s anti power theft squad has reportedly detected forty-one illegal connections, wherein several structures including households and small businesses were foundto be involved in the usage of stolen power by way of illegal hooking/tapping.Department officials said that through this operation, the department is sending out a strong message that it will not tolerate power theft. According to them, the general public are made to suffer due to the illegal connections as defaulters are the least concerned about sensible usage of energy (power). They said the power distribution system is designed to operate with a certain load and it will ultimately develop snags such as damage of transformers in the case of overloading.
With the arrival of winter, the consumption of electricity in the state capital is likely to increase as the people will be using high power consumption appliances like heaters and blowers and also extra lightings to complement the festive season.
Towards this end, the power department officials have appealed to the public for judicious use of electricity.
The anti power theft operations in Kohima is currently being conducted under the electrical sub-division No-1 which covers the urban area and will gradually reach out to the other sub-divisions shortly.
Meanwhile, the SDO (E) No-1 Kohima has informed that the electrical sub-division No-1 has, during the first week of November, executed the first round of disconnection of power supply from consumers who have failed to clear their bills within the time stipulated by the department. He said the next round will be carried out very soon.
Mention may be made here that it was widely circulated in the local dailies earlier this year that the state power department is facing huge revenue losses owing to several factors and a large segment of the shortfall has been attributed to rampant power theft and network tampering as well as non-payment of bills.
The current demand for power in Nagaland is 110 megawatts. Even the off-peak demand for power is 70 megawatts. In March this year, Chief Engineer for Power of Nagaland K. Miachieo told the Media that the “actual availability” during peak hours (5 pm to 10 pm) was 60 MW while during off-peak hours (10 pm to 5 pm), it was just 40 Megawatts.
