Over 70,000 consumers provided prepaid meters
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, January 30 2016 : Even as the Manipur State Power Distribution Company Limited (MSPDCL) has run into outstanding dues of over Rs 109 crore which should be paid to CPSUs like NHPC, NEEPCO, PGCIL etc for pur-chase of energy and trans- mission charges, altogether 76456 power consumers of Imphal have been provided prepaid meters.

According to a statement issued by the MSPDCL, the total outstanding amount of these consumers as on December 31, 2015 is Rs 43,08,58,582 .

Subsequent upon conversion of postpaid consumers/legal unmetered consumers/illegal consumers into prepaid consumers, collection of outstanding arrears was stopped in the last two months.

This was done so as to smoothly carry out the backend exercise on freezing the out- standing dues of these prepaid consumers.

With this exercise now completed, MSPDCL has decided to recover outstanding dues from prepaid consumers who have outstanding dues against them.

It is anticipated that it may take two months to complete the exercise (starting from February 1 till March 31 this year).

Similar exercise will be undertaken for the remaining consumers of Imphal (after their conversion to prepaid) by April 2016 .

Presently, in case of prepaid consumers of Imphal, arrear amount is not collected.

Once the consumer-wise outstanding dues is fixed through transparent process of personal verification, the same figure shall be transferred to the data server and deduction can begin from the periodical recharges done by consumers.

In case of single phase and LT three phase prepaid consumer, outstanding due (principal, surcharge, and security deposit) once agreed between consumer and MSPDCL, will be frozen while principal amount will be migrated to consumer database for future deduction, surcharge and security deposit will be separately migrated and its deduction will be based on Government approval in future.

Each time a consumer recharges, 20 per cent of the recharge amount shall be adjusted in payment of outstanding dues which means if a consumer has an outstanding due of Rs.12,000 and the consumer comes to recharge for Rs.500, then Rs.100 will be adjusted in payment of arrear and he/she gets a recharge of Rs.400 .

All the details such as remaining dues, amount adjusted shall be shown on the recharge token.

In case of HT three phase prepaid consumer, he/she Consumer should pay 10 per cent of the total outstanding dues plus the current recharge amount.

This deduction is mandatory and if a consumer prefers to pay more than the mandatory deduction in order to avoid accumulation of surcharge, he/she would be allowed to do so, MSPDCL informed.

List of all the consumers with their outstanding dues would be made available in their respective sub-divisional office and the date of publication of the said list shall be published in local dailies in phased manner (starting from February 1).The details would also be uploaded in MSPDCL website www.mspdcl.com .

For those consumers who have registered themselves with MSPDCL for mobile sms delivery services, their outstanding details shall also be shared through sms.

It further asked consumers to consult their respective sub-divisional office regarding the outstanding due amounts within 20 days from the date of notification.

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