PCL to outsource services in loss-making circles

LUCKNOW : The UP Corporation Ltd (UPPCL) has rolled out a plan to outsource most of the services to private players in circles with high technical and commercial losses in a move that is being seen as a piecemeal back-door privatisation.

The corporation has identified around half a dozen such divisions for the purpose of handing them over to private companies under the new scheme named integrated service provider. The circles where the new project will be introduced in the first phase include Orai, Etawah, Kannauj under Agra discom, Rae Bareli under Lucknow discom, Saharanpur under Meerut disom and Ballia and Mau under Varanasi circles.

The Agra discom even floated tender on Saturday inviting private firms to participate in the scheme. “The company that gets the tender under the integrated service provide scheme will be responsible for giving electricity connections, installing meters, issuing bills, collecting dues etc with the department doing only monitoring,” an official in the UPPCL said.

Opposing the move, UP Rajya Vidyut Upbhokta Parishad president Awadhesh Kumar Verma claimed 90% electricity services would be privatised under the new scheme. “The move will benefit neither consumers nor the UPPCL as we have seen in the case of Agra that was handed over to the Torrent years back,” he said. The UPPCL’s move comes as a time when the state’s power engineers are already opposing the proposed amendments to the Electricity Act fearing privatisation.