WE came to know from a report published on this newspaper on Tuesday that power division had sought finance authorities' intervention to realise some Tk 13.83 billion in unpaid electricity bills from state entities.
According to the report, 52 state-owned entities, autonomous-and constitutional bodies had owed Tk 13.83 billion to six power-distribution companies under government's power division till November last.
No doubt this is a matter of grave concern for us. When general consumers are frequently facing various kind of fines and penalties for not paying power bills in time, the state-owned entities enjoy the facility for not paying such a huge amount of bills.
There are hundreds of instances that power connections to private households were disconnected by the officials of DESA and DESCO for not getting small amount of bills from ordinary consumers. Sometimes, many business entities have to face the wrath of power companies for not paying bills due to fall in their earnings.
But now we find that different state entities and autonomous bodies owe a large sum to the power companies.
The report says that the local-government division owes as high as Tk 7.73 billion as electricity bill followed by housing ministry Tk 1.02 billion, disaster management and relief ministry Tk 826 million, religion affairs ministry Tk 671 million, health service division Tk 440 million, public security division Tk 429 million, and secondary and higher education division Tk 395 million, among others.
As paying electricity bill in time is the responsibility of the ministries and departments, necessary measures should be taken by the government to realise the arrear bills from the concerned departments as soon as possible.
Atiqur Rahman
Dhanmondi, Dhaka
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