Energy Minister directs officials to recover dues of dedicated and trunk lines

KATHMANDU, APRIL 10: Minister for Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation, Deepak Khadka, has instructed the concerned electricity authorities to immediately recover the outstanding dues related to dedicated feeders and trunk lines.

The directive was issued during a meeting held at the Ministry yesterday, where Secretary of the Ministry of Energy, Suresh Acharya, Chairman of the Electricity Regulatory Commission, Dr. Ram Prasad Dhital, and Executive Director of the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), Hitendra Dev Shakya, were summoned for discussion.

A longstanding dispute has persisted regarding the electricity tariff charged to various industries for power supplied via trunk lines and dedicated feeders between January 2017 and April 2018. Minister Khadka emphasized that the dues must be recovered in accordance with the findings of a report submitted by a committee led by former Supreme Court Justice Girish Chandra Lal, which was formed to resolve the tariff dispute.

The report recommends collecting the arrears after reviewing data from the Time-of-Day (TOD) meters used for measuring electricity consumption through dedicated feeders and trunk lines. While industrialists have expressed willingness to settle their dues if the TOD meter data is re-evaluated—per the decision of the Council of Ministers on November 12 last year—they continue to oppose tariffs calculated without reference to TOD data, as applied by the NEA.