By IANS,
Chandigarh : To enhance collection of power bills, the Haryana government will offer incentives to village councils (panchayats) to act as “facilitators and motivators” to get people to pay their electricity bills regularly, an official said Monday.
Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda has approved the proposal to involve the panchayats as facilitators and a motivators for collection of power bills, a state government spokesman said here.
Under the scheme, the village councils that assist the power department in collection of bills from people will get a certain percentage of the enhanced power bill collection from their respective areas.
He said that the village councils will create awareness among electricity consumers and defaulters to regularly pay their power bills. They will also persuade those residents who have illegal connections to get regular connections and avoid penalties.
“The panchayats would be given incentives on a monthly basis at the rate of 20 percent of the increase in revenue over and above the benchmark, which is average of last three years for the corresponding month under the scheme,” said the spokesman.
However, the increase in revenue due to any tariff increase would not be considered in the incentive collections, but the increase in revenue due to load growth of consumers will be included.
He said that a one-time incentive of Rs.200 per collection would be given on any additional new connection or regularisation of illegal connections.
“The villages where the collection efficiency is more than 90 percent on sustained basis would be given two hours of additional power supply as incentive,” he added.