Departure from the past: Bista steps down as NEA chairman
KATHMANDU, AUG 05 -
First, it was the appointment of the managing director through an open competition. Now, giving up the tradition of the Energy Minister being the chairman, Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has managed to introduce the much needed administrative and structural reform process.
Breaking a 26-year-old tradition, Energy Minister Gokarna Bista on Thursday stepped down as the chairman of Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), paving way for the energy secretary to be the NEA’s chairman.
Bista’s move is aimed at making the state-owned power utility free from political meddling. The Legislature Parliament’s Natural Resources Committee had also prescribed for the same. “My decision to step down as NEA’s chairman and have a managing director through competition is to make the NEA free of political intervention,” Bista told a programme organised to hand over the chairmanship to Energy Secretary Balananda Poudel at the NEA central office in Kathmandu.
A Cabinet meeting on Thursday morning had endorsed Bista’s proposal of making the energy secretary the chairman of the NEA.
Bista, who has hit the headlines for some bold decisions of his, said the reform measures taken would make the NEA more professional. “We will give more autonomy to the NEA if the current measures are not enough,” he said. “The NEA cannot run in the current structure, reforms are a must.”
In his six-month tenure as the NEA chairman, Bista not only initiated a strong anti-power theft drive with a target of bringing electricity leakage to nine percent, but also made tender mandatory for the purchase of logistics of all NEA offices across the country. Now, NEA has to make an annual documentation of logistics required while purchase should be done through tenders. If the anti-power theft drive succeeds in bringing the leakage down to nine percent, the NEA will earn an additional revenue of Rs 3 billion.
As the new chairman and the managing director, Balananda Poudel and Dipendra Nath Sharma now have a tough job ahead. Both are taking charge of an institution that is facing a huge financial crisis. They have to take some bold decisions, including raising the electricity tariff that could earn them flak. Bista is of the view that if the NEA succeeds in winning back the common people’s faith, tariff hike won’t be a big problem.
With the NEA’s current major projects—Chamelia and Kulekhani-3—running behind schedule, the new managing director has to act fast on expediting the work of the hydro projects being constructed by the NEA. Huge and persistent system losses, overstaffing, towering overheads and political interference have turned the powr utility into a loss-making enterprise. Its accumulated loss is over Rs 19 billion.
Though the much needed reforms have been initiated, much needs to be done when it comes to the overall hydropower development policy. With a series of disturbances at project sites, hydropower developers are going through difficult times and power development agreement (PDA) of eight projects is yet to be completed. Bista’s next job is to break these bottlenecks along with managing resources of reservoir projects.
Source: Kantipur
First, it was the appointment of the managing director through an open competition. Now, giving up the tradition of the Energy Minister being the chairman, Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has managed to introduce the much needed administrative and structural reform process.
Breaking a 26-year-old tradition, Energy Minister Gokarna Bista on Thursday stepped down as the chairman of Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), paving way for the energy secretary to be the NEA’s chairman.
Bista’s move is aimed at making the state-owned power utility free from political meddling. The Legislature Parliament’s Natural Resources Committee had also prescribed for the same. “My decision to step down as NEA’s chairman and have a managing director through competition is to make the NEA free of political intervention,” Bista told a programme organised to hand over the chairmanship to Energy Secretary Balananda Poudel at the NEA central office in Kathmandu.
A Cabinet meeting on Thursday morning had endorsed Bista’s proposal of making the energy secretary the chairman of the NEA.
Bista, who has hit the headlines for some bold decisions of his, said the reform measures taken would make the NEA more professional. “We will give more autonomy to the NEA if the current measures are not enough,” he said. “The NEA cannot run in the current structure, reforms are a must.”
In his six-month tenure as the NEA chairman, Bista not only initiated a strong anti-power theft drive with a target of bringing electricity leakage to nine percent, but also made tender mandatory for the purchase of logistics of all NEA offices across the country. Now, NEA has to make an annual documentation of logistics required while purchase should be done through tenders. If the anti-power theft drive succeeds in bringing the leakage down to nine percent, the NEA will earn an additional revenue of Rs 3 billion.
As the new chairman and the managing director, Balananda Poudel and Dipendra Nath Sharma now have a tough job ahead. Both are taking charge of an institution that is facing a huge financial crisis. They have to take some bold decisions, including raising the electricity tariff that could earn them flak. Bista is of the view that if the NEA succeeds in winning back the common people’s faith, tariff hike won’t be a big problem.
With the NEA’s current major projects—Chamelia and Kulekhani-3—running behind schedule, the new managing director has to act fast on expediting the work of the hydro projects being constructed by the NEA. Huge and persistent system losses, overstaffing, towering overheads and political interference have turned the powr utility into a loss-making enterprise. Its accumulated loss is over Rs 19 billion.
Though the much needed reforms have been initiated, much needs to be done when it comes to the overall hydropower development policy. With a series of disturbances at project sites, hydropower developers are going through difficult times and power development agreement (PDA) of eight projects is yet to be completed. Bista’s next job is to break these bottlenecks along with managing resources of reservoir projects.
Source: Kantipur
