Govt to reduce loadshedding hours: CM

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaJanuary 20, 2020

SHILLONG: In some sort of relief to the people of the state, the duration of power cuts has been reduced to only two hours.

Informing this here on Monday, chief minister Conrad K Sangma told reporters after finalizing the discussion with different agencies, the government will be able to minimize the loadshedding hours from tonight.

“We will be restricting the loadshedding to only two hours in the night. The timing will be decided by the Meghalaya Energy Corporation Limited (MeECL),” he said.

The chief minister said there are two reasons that has led to the power shutdown one being the major infrastructural damage on the two power plants and the other due to the change in the government’s policy in term of power banking.

According to him, the first is beyond the government’s direct control but the second one is something which the government can work on.

“We worked on it by speaking to some of the agencies and managed to open up the letter of credit (LC) and now we will be able to get the back the power given to them earlier. Roughly we are expecting to get back 40 mega watt of power,” he said.

Asked, the chief minister said an LC of Rs 13 crore has been issued as part of the arrangement with the NTPC.

Apart from this, Sangma further informed that the government is also paying Rs 65 lakh to NEEPCO on a daily basis.

Urging the people to pay their power dues regularly, he said a total of Rs 121 crore is due in the market. Of this, the pending dues with the industrial high tension consumers is Rs 52 crore, domestic low tension consumers – Rs 40.1 crore and commercial low tension consumers – Rs 21 crore.

“We appeal to people to clear their dues to allow us smoothen the system for the future also,” he said.

The demand for power supply is around 600 plus mega watt. The chief minister however said that the power production from Umiam and Leskha projects is only 300 MW. “We have a huge deficiency of around 300 MW in term of unrestricted demand,” he said.

Meanwhile, Sangma said the only way in the long run to improve the power scenario in the state is to create better efficiency, to encourage consumers to use power in a very economical and efficient manner, and to increase the power production.