NEA's unpaid account rises to Rs 780 million

NEA's unpaid account rises to Rs 780 million
eKantipur.com, 16-Jun-2007

Eastern regional office of Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has over Rs 780 million to collect from its clients. Of the total dues, it has accounted over Rs 40 million as bad debt, as those belong to clients who have refused to pay and have been blacklisted.

Defaulters of NEA's book of accounts include municipalities of the region, village development committees, government offices, industries, trading houses and household clients.

According to Tanka Prasad Shrestha, assistant director of NEA, the bulkiest unsettled account stands for electricity consumed by streetlights in municipalities and VDCs.

“Municipalities of 13 districts of the eastern region alone have Rs 288.61 million to pay to the NEA,” Shrestha told the Post.

Officials at the NEA regional office said that arrears of local bodies have shot up mainly because they have not been clearing bills fearing it would impact their budget. In fact, they have repeatedly refused to verify the volume of electricity consumed by them.

“Municipality officials do not respond to our request to conduct verification of bills generated from street lights,” said Shrestha, adding that lack of formal ownership of those bills by the municipalities have affected NEA in its endeavor to collect the bill amount.

Under the existing system, local bodies need to settle bills of street lamps. In case they cannot do so, they have to verify the bills, certifying that those were generated by street lamps, to pave way for the NEA to approach the Ministry of Local Development for payment

In latter mode of payment, the Ministry deducts the payment amount from the budget allocated to local bodies. As that reduces the budget the local bodies would receive, municipality officials have been avoiding verification of NEA bills.

The system of verification is followed because most of the street lamps do not have meters.

Very recently, Udaypur and Ilam municipalities have agreed for the verification, said Shrestha. According to NEA records, Ilam has unsettled bills worth Rs 3.63 million and Udaypur has dues totaling to Rs 815,000. The largest defaulter of NEA bills in the region is Biratnagar sub-metropolis. It owes Rs 68.39 to NEA. Rajbiraj has unpaid due of Rs 42.12 million, Itahari - Rs 48.74 million, Lahan - Rs 50.37 million and Dharan - Rs 24.68 million.

Likewise, Siraha has to pay Rs 14.72 million, Duhabi - Rs 11.66 million, Bhadrapur - Rs 17.25 million, Damak - Rs 4.01 million and Dhankuta - Rs 2.17 million.