Students, farmers affected due to power shutdown
SHILLONG: Expressing discontentment over excessive billing due to interest imposition on the electricity bills, the Anti-Corruption and Human Development Organisation (ACHDO) president, Ishraful Hogue, has sought Home Minister James Sangma’s intervention and urged him to exempt interests from outstanding interest bills of pre-privatisation period.
The ACHDO president also lamented over students bearing the brunt of the complete shutdown of power without prior notice, and requested Sangma to also terminate the privatisation.
“This action of FEDCO has put the student community, irrespective of their affiliation, in a difficult situation as the MBOSE examinations are only few days away. It has been noticed on the billing receipt that the interest is more than the actual bill. The consumer is ready to pay the outstanding bills but it has become difficult to pay all the outstanding bills at a time with increase of interest. Therefore, we request you to kindly take necessary steps to stop adding interest, and completely exempt interest component prior to privatisation,” Hogue, in his letter, said.
He also alleged that post privatisation, the billing has inflated, adding that “rate should be according to previous rate charged by MePDCL”.
“Moreover, we have noticed that FEDCO had billed excessively for a particular month on the pretext of suppressed reading though the nominal bills of previous months were regularly cleared by the consumers,” he added.
He also alleged FEDCO of taking signature/thumb impression in blank Indian non-judicial stamp papers.
“If I am not wrong, it is first time in the history of Meghalaya that a private power distribution company, FEDCO, is taking signature/thumb impression in blank non-judicial stamp paper, keeping the consumers in complete darkness for such action,” he said.
Taking a stand against the afflictions faced by the farmers due to the power supply shutdown, he said FEDCO cannot be entrusted with power distribution in the state.
“It’s time for IRRI paddy cultivation, which requires regular water supply to the paddy fields, and there are uncountable farmers, who are using electric motor pump to irrigate their paddy fields. Now shutting of power supply at this juncture is extremely intolerable as poor farmers are put to undesirable hardships, which will ultimately put burden to their livelihood. Moreover, the incidents of theft, loots, etc., are also happening due to complete power shutdown,” he said.