LUCKNOW: Stressing that the satisfaction and convenience of power consumers was top priority of the BJP government, energy minister Shrikant Sharma on Monday directed discom officials to patrol the feeders and meet smart meter consumers to address their woes.
The energy minister issued the directions after a review meeting on rectifying faulty billing and measures to bring down transmission and distribution losses.
“If required, the discom officials should leave their cosy offices and may patrol on their cycles,” suggested the energy minister, who himself has started cycling to the office and to visit consumers for a direct feedback of power supply and other issues. The minister has been visiting power substations and consumers’ homes on his bicycle in Lucknow and his home district Mathura.
During a review meeting last week, the energy minister wrote a letter to the chairman of the UPPCL and principal secretary (energy), Arvind Kumar to ask billing companies to comply with their agreement with the UPPCL, failing which strict action would be taken.
In order to make the Yogi government appear friendly to the electricity consumers in the state, the energy minister had shot down any increase in the power tariff, asking authorities to focus on revenue realisation instead of choosing the easy way by hiking the tariff.
In order to take feedback from the public on his major decisions of replacing faulty meters, checking erroneous billing and freezing the hike, the energy minister has started a door-to-door campaign for taking consumers’ feedback for further improvement and to ask the authorities to take immediate corrective measures.
