Tura: If electricity bills indicate a society’s prosperity, then one can safely say that Garo Hills is on the Highway of Good Times. After all, if you are paying thousands in electricity bills, it must be because a) you have plenty of electronic items at your perusal and b) power cuts are a thing of the past. Right?
Except, let us not forget, this is Garo Hills we are talking about. A region where even primary education is a dream for many. Where power cuts are so long and common, they no longer make it to the news.
To make matters worse, it is mostly people living below the poverty line (BPL) receiving electricity bills in the range of Rs 3,000-Rs 4,000 per month even though they hardly ever get continuous electricity for 12 hours.
Almost all getting inflated bills have been ‘guilty’ of installing smart meters in their homes. A consumer from the Garobadha region in South West Garo Hills (WGH) recently posted his bill on social media. The consumer has just the essentials: two light bulbs to see at night. The family cannot even afford a fan and has been living without one. They were given their connection through the scheme for the BPL families, but are now at their wit’s end after they received a bill of Rs 3655 for one month.
Interestingly, they received a similarly high bill last month. However, they somehow managed to pay it off to avoid losing their connection. With electricity now an essential service, losing it would mean a huge loss. This month, however, the situation is different, and they fear they may not have electricity any more.
This is not an isolated case. Many such reports have emerged.
Earlier, in Tura, an auto driver who lives in a two-room house was hit with a bill of over Rs 11,500 for one month, and that too when Garo Hills witnessed ten hours of load shedding.
Meanwhile, residents in Garo Hills have begun to question the continued load shedding in their areas when the entire region has been getting enough water to produce electricity for the state. Many places, including urban ones, are still being hit with load-shedding for 3-4 hours at least, despite an abundance of water for now.
“How is it that the department still has to resort to load shedding even when all our rivers are full and so is electricity generation? How many more months do people have to suffer the consequences of corruption in the MeECL? This is getting to the point of becoming ridiculous,” said a consumer from Mendipathar in North Garo Hills, on condition of anonymity.
MeECL authorities had earlier claimed they were paying back a private entity for borrowing during the time when the state hardly received any rain.
This too is now being questioned by consumers who can scarcely believe that the state has put them in the back seat.
“So for how many months do you have to repay them? The amount of power being generated by MeECL is enough to provide only that amount of electricity for us. If that is the case, why was the rest borrowed and where did it go to? This excuse is getting tiresome as everyone seems to understand that you are trying to sell this electricity somewhere else,” added another consumer from Tura.
Interestingly many areas, especially the plain belt, continue to receive low wattage of electricity for whatever time they have electricity. What is interesting is that their electricity bills continue to remain the same or have grown even bigger during the interim.
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“Are we not supposed to pay for only the service we receive? How is it that we still receive the bills that we would normally get when we had full power? What are we paying for – load shedding? The department needs to get its act together before someone takes them to Court for cheating us,” informed a Phulbari resident, again on condition of anonymity.
Their area continues to suffer from low voltage – an issue that could have been resolved with the start of the power grid in Chibinang, about 8 km from Phulbari. While this was supposed to have been made operational in June, it remains but a pipe dream till now.
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