Avail services but don’t bother to pay : 24x7 power supply plan
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: November 03 2015 -
24x7 power supply. This sounds great, that is if one believes what the Manipur State Power Distribution Company Limited (MSPDCL) has had to say.
Hold it, this is not for the whole State, but only for Imphal area and hereby lies a tale.
If Imphal area is likely to receive 24 hours of power supply a day from next year, how about the other parts ?
Is it going to be a case of a few hours of power supply in the other districts, say 7 to 8 hours in Churachandpur and 24 hours in Imphal ?
Granted, the State Government or rather the MSPDCL cannot be expected to supply power equally and being the capital, Imphal may receive more priority, but why shouldn’t efforts be made to extend the provisions of uninterrupted power supply to all parts of the State ?
The Government must be working on some plans, no doubt about it, but the focus should be on equal opportunity for everyone.
This is the brighter side of the story and read the notice issued by MSPDCL and one gets a fair idea of how unresponsive the people can be.
Already the MSPDCL has made it clear that there is a need to drastically improve revenue collection in Imphal area.
The same yardstick is also applicable to other parts of the State.
According to the statistics laid down, the revenue collection in Imphal area is only Rs 5 crore against an expenditure of Rs 10.5 crore incurred towards purchase of power.
Needs no Maths genius to work out that this is more than 50 pc shortfall.
How does one expect the Government to keep making up for the huge shortfall ?
An apt example that the people by and large are yet to come to the realisation that they do have a bounden duty to pay taxes for the goods or service they avail.
If this is the situation in Imphal one can easily imagine the situation in other districts.
How willingly do the consumers pay their power bills ? Things have improved.
Imphal today no longer sees the daily load shedding.
Just a little over a year back, it was a case of load shedding during peak hour, that is from 5 pm or 6 pm till 9 pm or 10 pm, every alternate day and again load shedding from 10 pm till the morning again on alternate days.
This meant planning the day’s evening according to the load shedding schedule and everyone had to know when there is load shedding and at what hour.
It was the same with the study period of the children too. Things have definitely improved, but have the people appreciated this ?
Tough to say going by the statistics that revenue collection in Imphal area is still falling short by more than 50 percent.
The mentality of the people needs a complete overhaul. Nothing comes for free, more so when it is something like power supply or water supply.
This is about the power supply, which has seen some improvement in the last two years or so, but how about water supply ?
Have things improved ?
Even today, most of the households in Imphal have to buy water from private water carriers, with the Government able to supply piped water only twice or thrice a week.
Moreover it is only for a few hours.
Here again there is always the question of whether the people are paying their water taxes regularly or not.
* Comments posted by users in this discussion thread and other parts of this site are opinions of the individuals posting them (whose user ID is displayed alongside) and not the views of e-pao.net. We strongly recommend that users exercise responsibility, sensitivity and caution over language while writing your opinions which will be seen and read by other users. Please read a complete Guideline on using comments on this website.