Staff Reporter
DIMAPUR, JUNE 15
Engineers from the state’s department of Power have suggested the Nagaland government to either upgrade the existing sub-stations in Dimapur or create new ones in order to tackle the rising demand for, and consumption of, electricity in the state’s main trading town.
With a daily demand of 60 megawatts (at peak hours), Dimapur alone accounts for more than 41 percent of the state’s total requirement of power supply per day which is currently at 145 megawatts. However, on an average, Dimapur get only around 40-45 megawatts of power from the North Eastern Regional Load Dispatch Center, Shillong.
And this shortfall of around 15-20 megawatts per day, according to the Superintendent Engineer (Power) of Dimapur Circle, RW Odyuo, is the reason behind the frequent power cuts or load shedding that the consumers in Dimapur experience these days.
He said that the department engineers, along with the secretary of Power, had recently called a meeting where the engineers explained the need to either upgrade the existing sub-stations in the commercial area of Dimapur or create new ones.
If this proposal from the department engineers gets approval from the state’s policy makers, then at least 60 sub-stations would be upgraded or supplemented with a new sub-station. Over the years, similar proposals/programs have somehow failed to translate into the hard currency of action.
Odyuo said that the latest proposal, even if approved, would likely take some years before it has been materialized. As of now, he said that the department has been trying to encourage the consumers to utilize power judiciously.
Also, in the cases of big residential buildings or commercial complex, the department has been encouraging the proprietors to install their own power transformers. Odyuo however said that only a few have complied with the request even as the majority of them continue to use public transformers. He said that such encouragements must also come from the policymakers in Kohima and not only from the department engineers.
He also reiterated that the department has been hampered by shortage of financial allotment over the years. On the shortfalls in revenue collections, Odyuo admitted that the “revenue collection is not up to expectation.”
He however stated that low revenue collection is no excuse for the absence of modernization in the department. “Revenue and development are two separate things,” the SE stated.
