Mounting arrears on electricity and water bills continue to haunt both the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) and the Kerala Water Authority (KWA) even as both utilities have announced schemes to coax the defaulters to pay up.
As on June 30 this year, power bill arrears have mounted to a whopping ₹3,585.69 crore and that on water bills ₹1,352.35 crore, according to data furnished in the Assembly earlier this week by the Power and Water Resources departments. Government departments and institutions continue to top the list of defaulters, according to the break-ups of consumer categories that owe both utilities large sums.
In the case of KSEB, State public sector units alone have run up arrears of ₹1,768.80 crore, according to the Assembly documents. State government departments owe ₹141.43 crore and Central government institutions ₹110.42 crore. Central government departments (₹2.09 crore), private establishments (₹1,086.15 crore), domestic consumers (₹389.81 crore), public institutions (₹64.51 crore), local bodies (₹6.74 crore), and other establishments (₹15.74 crore).
The KWA ranks among the biggest individual defaulters on electricity bills on the KSEB’s list. But its own consumers owe the KWA ₹1,352.35 crore in unpaid water charges. Local bodies — panchayats, municipalities and corporations — owe ₹815.52 crore for supply to public taps, according to the data presented in the Assembly.
Domestic consumers owe the KWA ₹256.27 crore and the non-domestic category ₹211.35 crore. Industrial consumers owe the water utility ₹5.47 crore, while arrears run up by other categories have mounted to ₹63.74 crore.
After arrears touched ₹3,260.09 crore in March this year, the KSEB announced a one-time settlement scheme for recovering them. The Kerala State Electricity Regulatory Commission had given its nod for the OTS scheme which is currently open. According to the Power department, ₹300.84 crore in arrears had been recovered after the present government came to power.
On its part, the KWA had organised OTS schemes and internal adalats to whittle down the arrears from ₹2,111.59 crore in the 2021-22 fiscal to ₹1,194.95 crore in 2022-23. In a recent circular on preparing the Budget estimates for the 2024-25 fiscal, the Finance department impressed upon government departments the need to accelerate collections.
