AP power utilities, which have been keen on protecting the interests of the farming community, have decided to adopt a five-point program to strictly ensure seven hours’ power supply to farmers without any deviation to save the standing crops during the Khariff season, as the agricultural operations are in full swing.
The five-point program covers development of customized software for ensuring assured power supply to agriculture sector; to ensure free transportation of failed DTRs by adopting GPS system; ensure timely replacement of failed DTRs i.e. within 48 hours in rural areas; conducting sub-station level meetings to get feedback from farmers and vigilance teams to inspect randomly for monitoring seven-hour power supply.
The Principal Secretary (Energy) Dinesh Kumar has written to the APTRANCO to review general power supply position and issue instructions to the DISCOMs to invariably ensure seven-hour power supply to the farm sector. He categorically mentioned that the government has been supporting the utilities by providing huge subsidy i.e. around Rs 5,530 crores for 2012-13 (domestic – Rs 1908 crores and the remaining Rs 3,622 crores exclusively for free power) as against Rs 4,200-crore subsidy of last year and it is the top priority of the government to implement the seven-hour power supply to the farm sector.
APTransco CMD/Hiralal Samariya, who will be discussing the issue with the top officials of the sector on Monday, said that the objective of the power utilities was to make all-out efforts to protect the standing crops in Khariff and for this purpose, the utilities have decided to adopt the five-point program for providing power supply to the satisfaction of farmers to the maximum extent.
He said that APEPDCL has developed customized software, which is extremely useful for displaying details of feeder wise agriculture supply position on the website for ensuring seven hours power supply to the farm sector and directed other DISCOMs also to use the latest software. DISCOMs have sufficient rolling stock of Distribution Transformers (DTRs) to replace failed DTRs within stipulated time i.e. 48 hours in rural areas without causing any inconvenience and financial burden to the consumers. The DISCOMs were asked to ensure that the Global Positioning System (GPS) software is installed for tracking the movement of department vehicles for transportation of transformers and to avoid any scope of misuse. The special teams of vigilance have been deputed to randomly monitor the load restrictions throughout the State apart from ensuring seven-hour power supply to the farm sector. Any deviation by the field officers of the DISCOMs in this regard will be viewed very seriously. (NSS)