Agartala, Aug 09, 2023, TRIPURATIMES Desk

Agartala, Aug 09: Chief Minister Dr. Manik Saha on Wednesday asked the officials of the Power department to ensure better services in the state.

The Chief Minister, who chaired a review meeting of the Power department along with the Minister for Power Ratanlal Nath and other officials, also passed an instruction to the officials concerned for increasing mass awareness to prevent wastage of power. He laid emphasis on installing better transformers to ensure disruption of power supply.

Addressing the review meeting, Dr. Saha further stressed on expediting works under both the central and the state projects for providing uninterrupted electricity services to the people. He said, the state government has already taken various steps to improve the power sector.

He said, necessary steps should be taken against the hook line users and for collecting unpaid bills in different parts of the state.

The Power Minister said a target has been set to bring all the Village Panchayats under solar power. Initially, 8 villages in 8 districts have been identified for the project. In this context, the Chief Minister further asked the department to take an initiative on priority basis to bring GBP hospital, IGM hospital and TMC under solar power.

Secretary of Power department- Abhishek Singh said in the meeting that steps would be taken to set up electric vehicle charging stations in all eight districts.

He said, the production of power in the state is more than the demand. The average demand for power in the state is around 330 MW per day. This year, the highest single-day demand for power was recorded at 362.20 MW.

The Secretary also said, the number of power consumers in the state is 9,71,210 and the figure is increasing every day. The state registered an increase of around 2.35 lakh electricity consumers over the last five years. He said, a plan is in the pipeline to increase production.

Highlighting the future plans for the next five years, he said, a 120-MW Close Cycle Power Project has been planned at Rukhia with the support from Asian Development Bank. The expenditure for this project would be Rs. 845.36 crore.

Chief Secretary JK Sinha, Secretary of Industries and Commerce department Abhishek Chandra, Secretary of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare- Apurba Roy, Chief Managing Director of TSECL Debashis Sarkar and other high officials attended the review meeting.