Excelsior Correspondent
Srinagar, Nov 23: In a bid to save factory owners from paying huge electricity bills and to earn themselves money from illegal ways, officials of the Power Development Department (PDD) are facilitating open loot of electricity in Qazigund.
MAK Plywood factory, operating from Nipora, MirBazar-falling under sub-division Qazigund of the PDD-has an agreement load of 510 kilowatts, however, in league with the officials of the department, the factory owner is resorting to power theft for last more than 3 months while rendering the electricity meter defunct.
More so, the factory owner has also managed to get a direct electricity connection from the 33000 link in the area-the sanction to which is generally given to bigger industrial units and takes months together. However, the sources have told Excelsior that he managed to get it without any delay after monetarily benefiting the concerned officials of the PDD.
The sources revealed that the officials of the department have provided the factory with ways of resorting to the looting of the power resources, who they said, in turn, get a handsome cut out of it.
They revealed that the concerned AEE is in league with the factory owner along with other officials who are regularly getting their share of the money by paving a way for the owner to open theft.
After the Excelsior team in the district highlighted the issue of power theft, a team comprising of PDD officials reached the factory site who were astounded after seeing the set up put in place for the power theft.
“It has a direct connection and at the same time the meter is lying defunct, there is no reading on it, there was no input, output mechanism of the meter in place-an ideal case of power theft, entirely illegal,” the inspection team said.
When the owner of the factory was asked about it, he said that the meter installed at his factor has been lying defunct for the last 2 days and he has reported the same to the department. He said that the department did not bothered to attend to it so far.
However, the wing of the department in the district dealing with such issues stated that they have not received any such complaint for the last more than 2 months, indicating, firstly, no such complaint was ever made, second, the meter was deliberated made non-functional.
Moreover, the sources told Excelsior that a former AEE in the area was transferred after he did not allow such violations to occur. They also said that even a few more clerks who refused to facilitate such corruption were shifted to some other place.
The Superintending Engineer (SE) of the area, Ghulam Rasool , said that action will be taken against the concerned AEE and others involved.
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