EB plans drive to collect dues from govt bodies

CHENNAI: To recover the long pending dues from the urban local bodies, Tangedco has instructed the superintendent engineers to collect monthly energy bills from the corporation, municipality and town panchayats every month. The initiative is to collect old dues in monthly instalments which amount to nearly Rs 1,000 crore.

In a circular to all the SEs of the energy distribution circles, Tangedco’s director of finance asked the officials to collect the current consumption charges from all the urban local bodies monthly as per the decision taken at the meeting held by the additional chief secretary of the Municipal Administration and Water Supply Department on May 18.

With the total pending dues from the municipal corporations touching about Rs 650 crore, the utility, which has been trying to recover the pending dues, has decided to collect the dues through EMIs.

It said that the Director of Municipal Administration should fix the 24 monthly EMIs for the pending current consumption dues. “The pending dues should be calculated and paid after adjusting any amount payable by Tangedco, “ the circular said.

The additional chief secretary of the MA and WS department has instructed the Greater Chennai Corporation to pay a sum of Rs 5 crore per month to settle the outstanding dues in 20 months in anticipation of the land cost adjustment orders to be issued.

Tangedco officials said that the Chennai corporation has the highest pending dues among all urban local bodies. Among the government departments and boards, the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board (TWAD) is the biggest defaulter.

“Tangedco has established a dashboard for all local bodies and government departments for monitoring the dues. They can view and monitor the service connection wise arrears and even identify the unwanted service connections and take action to disconnect those connections if warranted,” as per the circular.