Patiala, November 18
Way has been paved for dismantling of the Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) with the board management passing a resolution to this effect and forwarding the same to the Punjab Cabinet for ratification.
The proposal was taken up and passed unanimously by all whole time members of the board on November 16. The meeting was presided over by board Chairman Y.S. Ratra. However the board is yet to make any formal announcement in this regard, with sources saying the entire issue was being kept under wraps.
Board Chairman Y S Ratra when contacted confirmed the development. He said now it was upto the Cabinet to take a decision.
He however, refused to disclose the details of the proposal whereby the PSEB would be dismantled saying he could not do so under the law.
Sources, however, told TNS that the PSEB had recommended the creation of a holding company by the name of Powercom which would oversee the entire dismantling procedure. The sources said
the holding company would remain in existence for only two years. The source said the board had recommended the unbundling of the board into five companies, including three distribution companies, one Generation company and one transmission company.
The recommendation to unbundle the board had come about after a report prepared by Ernst and Young, consultants who had been engaged by the board to submit a blueprint in this regard. Earlier the rough proposal in this regard had been carved out by Mr Gajindra Haldia, a consultant, who had been engaged by the Punjab Government. The sources said state Finance Minister Surinder Singla had also played a major role in pushing forward this issue following which state Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, who had delayed the issue till the holding of the recent byelections in the state, also gave his nod to the proposal.
Meanwhile engineers with the PSEB claimed that the board had a fallen into a trap by recommending the unbundling of the board. Earlier also the Engineers Association had claimed that unbundling the board would be akin to trying the “failed” replica model of reforms carried out in other parts of the country. The association had claimed that unbundling of the state electricity Boards into different companies would result in serious problems of coordination between Generation, transmission and distribution wings.
The Engineers Association general secretary H.S. Bedi told that TNS that in a scenario of power shortage the major objective was to ensure the optimum utilisation of the available power generation and since power could not be stored a vertical integrated structure covering generation, distribution and transmission was required.
However management sources felt that the twin trouble of the PSEB was a large workforce which needed to put to work and large-scale theft of electricity. The management fell that these two issues as well as many more could only be dealt with after creating small manageable companies instead of retaining the 92,000 employee strong- present board.
