Noose tightening around errant power sector?

The parliamentary oversight committee's decision to review power sector problems and prospects has already made the Power Division form a three-member surveillance body to check electricity pilferage, fake billing as well as to ensure better customer service in the capital and its adjoining areas. It is an internal monitoring contrivance that should have been in place as a matter of routine necessity. Awakened from a long stupor, the power division has a committee now with a blueprint for action, which again ought to have been a given thing: it will pay surprise visit to any residence or institution under the jurisdiction of DESA and DESCO to verify whether the bills matched the meter readings. It will also identify illegal connections. What's more, the body is empowered to take action against any official, meter reader and house owner found guilty of collusive malpractice. Why on earth were these not provided for earlier on?

Indeed, the corrective flair is so comprehensive that the Comptroller and Auditor General's office has been requested to report irregularities found in different organisations in the power sector to the JS committee. Thereupon the committee would recommend measures to the ministry concerned.

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We have two specific suggestions to make: one, the power division's committee should have a public complaints cell; and two, which is vitally important, there has to be some public hearing before the Public Undertaking Committee of the Jatiya Sangsad.