Report of Indian Institute of Public Administration ... - Ministry of Power

State Reports (Vol.-III)
Study on `Impact of Restructuring of SEBs’
• Establishment of forums and Vidyut Ombudsman for redressal of consumer
grievances;
• Licensee’s duty for supply of electricity on request; and
• Electricity Supply Code.
The standards of performance have been notified by the APERC. It covers the
time schedules fixed by the Commission for different services to be rendered
by the licensee. The Commission also specified the penalties to be paid by the
licensees in the case of default in time schedules specified in the performance
standards.
Procedures have thus been laid down for implementation of performance
standards relating to consumer services. The consumer grievance redressal
forums, established in all the four DISCOMs, have started functioning. The
institution of Vidyut Ombudsman is also in place to deal with appeals against
the orders of the forums. The Number of complaints received from the
consumers and attended to by the DISCOMs in recent years is as given below:
Details of Complaints
Particulars 2003-04 2004-05
Total No. of complaints received 1,72,693 1,92,731
No. of complaints attended 1,66,531 1,87,619
Percentage of complaints attended 96.43 97.35
Steps taken by the DISCOMs to improve consumer services are as follows:
• 324 Customer Services Centres have been established to cover all towns,
municipalities, corporations and sub-divisional headquarters in the rural
areas to handle the complaints;
• Vidyut Adalats are held to resolve billing complaints at Mandal HQs once
in a month;
• Distribution transformer replacement centres have been increased from 85
to 272;
• Spot billing, using hand held computers, have been introduced in all the
areas;
• On-line bill collection facility has been made available in Hyderabad City
and all the towns through e-seva centres;
1.43