E-Kantipur

Minister for Commerce and Supplies Lekh Raj Bhatta has added a twist in the diesel power plant tale currently making rounds in Kathmandu. On December 30, speaking at Kathmandu’s Reporters’ Club, he said that diesel plant was not useful for Nepal and that instead of diesel plant, we could think of extending transmission lines, developing solar energy and building small hydro power plants.

We are not sure if our PhD-in-regional-planning Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai shares the same vision as Bhatta. It could be that Bhatta’s remarks reflect the deep, and perhaps irreconcilable fissures within the Maoists between the Mohan Baidhya and Prachanda-Baburam camps. During the interaction program, Bhatta added that the Energy Minister Post Bahadur Bogati was an honest person but that this diesel power plant project was being pushed by some with vested interest in the ministry. I am sure Bhatta knows that Prime Minister himself has been pushing his Energy Minister to expedite the process of installing the diesel plants, and that the dominant private businesses in Nepal have been pushing for state-financed diesel plants for some time now.

In pushing for the proposed 200 MW diesel plants, the government has not responded to a simple question that Gokarna Bista, the Energy Minister during Jhalanath Khanal-led government, has raised: why  this project when the existing diesel plants in Hetauda and Duhabi are lying idle? Moreover, if we could stop 10 percent of the total electricity pilferage, that would save 150 MW, he was recently quoted as saying. The story is a bit complicated, for sure.

The twist in the tale also involves the resignation of the executive director of Nepal Electricity Authority Dipendra Nath Sharma. He could not withstand the pressures exerted by the NEA trade unions. These unions belong to all major political parties. In early September, my friends and I went to pay a friendly visit to Sharma at his office. I was particularly interested in exploring what he thought of alternative energy generation. We were asked to wait at his office as he was in a meeting of management team of NEA. After a while, a bunch of bespectacled gentlemen (as far as I remember, there was no woman in that team) exited his office door. We went in.

“Everybody thinks I could not do anything new here,” he began the conversation. “Old ways are so entrenched, it looks almost impossible.” Then he told us two specific ways NEA staffs siphon off resources.

“You saw all those Prados and Pajeros, parked outside, right? The drivers’ union does not allow any driver to report fuel mileage above 5 km/litre. Well, this is just one of thousands of things that happen every day.” Why did we need one Pajero for one manager, for instance?

He then shared with us a technique the meter-readers routinely deploy to create win-win situation between themselves and the electricity customers. The meter-readers read the minimum amount each month creating a bill of minimum amount, irrespective of the fact that the actual meter would read much higher than reported. “If you go and check, some of those customers are very rich and often use all kinds of appliances. If is unthinkable that the real meter reads that low.” At the end of each year, those clients then would report that their meter had gone bad and ask for replacement. They would pay for replacement meter happily. That would cost them around a couple of thousand rupees, which often is far less than the money they saved by paying the minimum charge. Part of that saving routinely goes to meter-readers. Well, this system can survive only if the same meter reader reads the meters each time. That is where the unions come in to block any attempt at changing the meter readers regularly.

Pilferage takes many forms. Once I visited the office of CPN(UML)’s Ghanshyam Bhushal in Singh Durbar. He was the minister without portfolio in the Jhalanath Khanal-led government. As he gave swift lecture on the state of Marxism, I looked at his well-lit room. He had about twelve 60-watt fluorescent light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. He could have just opened the windows full or installed a few windows and he did not have to guzzle up 840 watts only for the light.

I’ll cite one more example. In 2011, I visited Chitwan after several years. New temples had come up in most of the chowks in and around my hometown, and one among them was a yellow Shiva temple a few hundred meters north from my home in Tandi. This temple had over twenty 100-watt incandescent bulbs hanging down from the cantilevered roof and the power came from two naked wires hooked onto the mainline. I am sure PM Baburam Bhattarai and his Energy Minister has also figured out by now that they use wire-heaters to make tea or boil ready-made noodles for haakims and staff in many government offices.

Going back to the diesel plant, the installation cost comes around Rs 12 billion for 200 MW plants. Their operating cost would amount to at least Rs 10 billion for the five dry-season months. Well, that is if the diesel price remains as it is now. Every sane person knows it is not going to remain as it is. It is going to go up and up. But for now, it appears our dear leader is determined to provide diesel-powered electricity to the nation. However, it will not be long before we will realise that diesel-powered industrial dream will remain a mere illusion. These diesel plants, if installed, will become a grotesque monument of our misguided priorities and dreams, and perhaps that is how we will remember PM Bhattarai for a long time.

anilbhattarai@gmail.com

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