Unable to recover large electricity bill dues from consumers, power discomofficials in Harda have gone back to the age-old practice of public shaming the defaulters. The idea is to embarrass them to pay the dues.

Band baja is the new weapon with which the officials are approaching the defaulters.

The officials accompanied with band players reach the houses of defaulters & play the band. There are around 1,139 electricity consumers in small Harda town who have outstanding dues of above Rs 5,000 & aren't paying them on time.

On the 1st day of the drive officials collected Rs 2.5 lakh from around 25 consumers on Aug 29.

“Overall there are around 18,000 consumers in Harda town. But we have found out a list of around 1,139 consumers who have an outstanding of over Rs 5000 & above & have refused to pay despite reminders,” district engineer, Harda, Vatam Khade told.

“We are sending our team with ‘band’ party to their doorsteps & requesting them to pay the dues. We would evaluate the impact of the new initiative after analyzing the response. On 1st day, our teams along with ‘band’ party reached out to 32 big defaulters & 25 paid their dues. A total around Rs 2.5 lakh was collected & the connection of 7 were snapped,” Khade said.

“This is just another attempt to recover dues. We have an outstanding of Rs 2.73 crore on these 1,139 consumers. They are urban consumers & we are doing our best to provide better services. Even if there are complaints, the complaints are being resolved on time, but still we aren't receiving our dues,” he added.

“As of now we don't have any budget or head under which we could pay for these ‘band baaja’ but once we analyze the impact of the drive & find it fruitful, we would send a proposal to head office seeking provisions for allocations”, he added.

On Friday, the discom officials couldn't continue with their ‘band baja’ drive due to some technical snags. “There was some fault in the transmission & our staff was engaged in restoring the power supplies,” assistant engineer of the Harda city circle.

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