Goa power department should issue regular bills, demands GFP

The Goa Forward Party (GFP) has demanded that the state Power department should be regular in issuing electricity bills to the consumers, so that they don't feel the burden of financial strain to pay huge amounts of cumulative bills.
"It is the duty of the state Power department to issue the bills on monthly basis. They have been billing people for five months cumulatively. That is straining the consumers to pay whopping amounts," alleged GFP spokesperson Durgadas Kamat.
The newly formed party has petitioned the Chief Electrical Engineer of the department asking him to rectify the problems and ensure that consumers are getting their bills on the time.

"The department needs to understand that the majority of Goemkars (Goans) comprises of the salaried middle class, small businessmen and others who have a fixed monthly income or who are day to day bread earners and cannot afford to pay such unbearably high sums at one instance," Kamat told PTI.
"The department has been highly successful in making life miserable for the majority of Goemkars who are trying hard to make ends meet," reads the petition.
GFP has further alleged that street lights are non functional across the state leaving the roads in dark.
"Despite collection ofinfrastructure duty to the tune ofRs 790 crore annually, Goa is in the dark with almost no street lights in urban and rural Goa," Kamat alleged.

"Whenever the municipalities and the panchayats knock the doors of the Power Department the usual complaint is of absence of equipment and fixtures. There seems to be no accountability in the utilisation ofinfrastructure cess collected from the power consumers and citizens of Goa," he further alleged.