Kathmandu, September 15

Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has issued a warning to house owners not to collect more than the price fixed for per unit electricity by the power utility from tenants. Kul Man Ghising, managing director of NEA, said that the electricity tariff has not been increased since he assumed the responsibility of managing director in 2016.

Speaking at a programme to mark his three-year tenure at NEA today, Ghising said that tenants have been asking the NEA to sort out this problem of house owners charging more than the price fixed by NEA.

“We have received many complaints related to house owners collecting extra money from tenants. We would like to advise such house owners to stop that practice or else they could face a penalty,” he added.

However, Ghising did not mention the type of penalty that house owners charging more from tenants could face.

“Previously, we used to receive such complaints from people who had taken property on rent for commercial or personal purposes through a contractor. But now we have been getting complaints that even individual house owners have started charging more from tenants,” he stated.

Ghising further said that it has come to the notice of NEA that house owners have been charging electricity tariffs from tenants at their own will. “If this is true we will definitely take action against such erring landlords.”

He added that the NEA has fixed electricity tariff in between three rupees and Rs 13 for domestic users and asked people to lodge a complaint at the power utility if any landlord has been charging more than that.

Ghising also mentioned that the NEA is now focused on reliable power supply to consumers. “Previously, our main challenge was to eliminate the problem of load-shedding and now that the problem has been resolved we are focusing on improvement of transmission and distribution systems across the country.”

“There are some issues related to electricity tripping, which is caused by natural and human errors. So, we have already launched a rapid action plan to replace the old system of some of the transmission lines, distribution lines, transformers, substations, among others to get rid of that problem,” he added.

Moreover, NEA has mentioned it will focus on constructing reservoir type and peaking-run-of-river hydropower projects for more stability in electricity generation and distribution. To reduce the problem of electricity leakage, NEA also has plans to instal automatic pre-paid and post-paid automatic smart metres for households.

As per the government’s plan, NEA said it will be able to electrify all households across the country by 2022. “We have also set a target to control electricity leakage

to 12 per cent of the total distribution in the ongoing fiscal year which currently stands at 15.45 per cent,” Ghising said.