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Andhra Pradesh: Power sector workers protest against Centre’s electricity bill

Andhra Pradesh: Power sector workers protest against Centre’s electricity bill

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Addressing the employees, joint action committee convenor Ch Purushottam Rao said that the several clauses of the electricity amendment bill were draconian and hit the poor. He said that farmers would be the biggest suffers once the new bill is cleared by the parliament

GUNTUR: Power sector workers staged protests across the state demanding the Centre to immediately withdraw the proposed electricity amendment bill on Monday.

They termed the bill as anti-people and anti-federal structure of the country.

Addressing the employees, joint action committee convenor Ch Purushottam Rao said that the several clauses of the electricity amendment bill were draconian and hit the poor. He said that farmers would be the biggest suffers once the new bill is cleared by the parliament. He said that the bill would not allow any discoms to give free supply to the agriculture sector as being given in many states including AP.

“It would force the discoms to privatize the bill collections resulting in more losses to the companies. He said that all profit making industries would be transferred to the private companies leaving the low-tariff domestic consumers to the PSU discoms,” Purushottam Rao added.

Superintending engineer M Vijaya Kumar said that any amendments to the old acts should provide more relief and benefit to the people. “Although, amendments to the existing Acts are not new and within the right of the government, no proposal should be detrimental to the benefit of the poor, marginalised sections,” he noted.

JAC leader AVVS Prasad wanted to know as to how it would be possible for the farmers to pay hefty bills to be fixed based on actual costs.

“Many states were providing relief to the farming sector by giving free power or subsidized rates to help the crisis-ridden farmers, he said, adding, the new bill would make it mandatory for the states to remove all such benefits in one go.

Prasad lashed out at the Centre for trying to bring such anti-people bill when the entire nation was facing a severe economic crisis due to Covid-19. The bill was aimed at removing little difficulties of the 2003 Act to the private companies to loot the public money.

Executive engineers K Venkateswarlu, Ch Ramesh, union leaders A Gurunatha Rao, B Chandrasekhar D Nagaraju, P Sundaram Babu were also present.

Source: energy.economictimes.indiatimes
Anand Gupta Editor - EQ Int'l Media Network

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