Nagpur: Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) is all set to take over power distribution operations from Spanco Nagpur Discom Limited (SNDL) from today i:e Sunday. The MSEDCL has sent a notice to SNDL in this regard and also deployed its employees at SDNL offices on since Saturday morning.
A flurry of activities occurred last fortnight after SNDL requested MSEDCL to step-in as the private company cited its inability to continue any longer. Dinesh Saboo, Director, Projects, arrived in the city on Saturday to supervise and push the exercise. MSEDCL has prepared a list of employees to be transferred to SNDL area immediately after formal announcement of the stepping-in. However, lack of co-ordination between MSEDCL and SNDL has left power consumers in lurch on Saturday as over 1,700 power-related complaints remain unattended.
MSEDCL has sent a SMSes to SNDL consumers requesting them to contact its customer care for help in case of power failure. When complaints started pouring in, MSEDCL again sent SMSes to the consumers appealing them to ignore the previous message. As a result, lots of power failure complaints remained unattended.
The employees and vendors of SNDL are panicked since the letter written by SNDL to MSEDCL started making rounds on social media. Recently, SNDL employees had staged agitation at their SNDL offices over disbursement of their salaries and dues and request to MSEDCL to postpone the taking over of the company affairs until their dues are settled. Sources also informed that MSEDCL has agreed to clear dues of SNDL employees which would be deducted from the dues of SNDL over state power company. Due to precarious financial position of its promoter, the Essel Group, SNDL finds itself in critical state and is not even in a position to arrange cash for its daily operations.
However, even as MSEDCL readies to take over the franchisee area, a minefield like situation awaits the state-run agency owing to critical situation. Most critical would be maintaining SNDL record that brought down the AT&C losses from 32 per cent to 15 per cent.
