THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Electricity Regulatory Commission, after granting a part of the tariff hike sought, has pulled up KSEB Limited for various accounting misdemeanors, including its reluctance to implement the directions relating the optimisation of employee cost and the failure to separate technical and commercial loss. “The Commission has been continuously expressing serious concerns over the steep and alarming increase in the employee cost and giving directions to optimize the employee cost,” the ERC said in a note issued to the state government. Many of the directions that the ERC had issued to KSEBL have been ignored.
Here are some that have been dumped: redeployment of underutilized staff, training and re-skilling of employees to take up assignments associated with reforms and modernization, job enrichment and redesigning of job content, computerization of revenue collection and facilitation of e-payment without much additional cost to the consumers, and constitution of independent committee for pay revision.
Separating technical and commercial losses was a directive issued to the utility right at the time it was converted into a company. KSEBL was asked to submit a proposal for the approval of separate technical and commercial losses. Recently the Parliamentary Committee on Power and Government of India had also given direction to separate technical and commercial loss. “KSEBL has so far not submitted application in this regard with supporting data and documents,” an ERC official said.
The ERC had also called into question certain whimsical decisions taken by KSEBL, especially the renewal of contract with Kayamkulam NTPC, that had hurt its balance sheet. The ERC, considering the prohibitive cost of naphtha, had directed KSEBL not to renew the power purchase agreement with any liquid fuel based plants. KSEBL but went ahead and renewed the deal with RGCCPP, Kayamkulam for 12 years without getting the ERC’s approval. In fact, the ERC note to the government observed that the utility was not in the practice of obtaining prior approval for the investments in various projects.
