Hyderabad: Telangana discoms, which are under the weather with mounting debts and inadequate financial assistance, are now faced with more problems. On one hand, revenues from commercial and industrial establishments towards power billing have dwindled due to Covid-19. On the other hand, power consumption has drastically come down in the high tension (commercial) category after the pandemic broke out in March this year.
The TSSPDCL is losing about 30% of its commercial revenues every month as many industries are yet to launch their operations. With IT and major firms still sticking to work from home facility, it was a double whammy for the discom. Official sources in the TSSPDCL said their monthly billing is Rs 1,700 crore and about Rs 1,000 crore is accrued from 9,000 HT consumers. “We are getting about Rs 700 crore to Rs 750 crore as against Rs 1,000 crore billing from commercial establishments and industries. For a month, we got Rs 100 crore more due to the old arrears for unbilled months,” a director of TSSPDCL told TOI.
Officials said the Covid-19 impact was more in Cyber City, Banjara Hills, Medchal and Sangareddy divisions.
“The Cyber City division runs a bill of Rs 120 crore every month and of this, Rs 70 crore billing is from IT offices. Now, we are getting only Rs 58 crore to Rs 60 crore a month billing. Hopefully, power consumption should go up with IT firms opening their offices and allowing the employees,” senior accounts officer (Cyber City) Bala Chandrudu said. Senior officials said nearly 2,000 to 3,000 industries falling under TSSPDCL are yet to resume operations despite easing of the lockdown norms two months ago. “The companies are struggling to get labourers, a majority of whom had migrated to their native states,” a chief general manager of the discom said.
