**Bhubaneswar: ** Members of CPM on Tuesday staged demonstration here at the Master Canteen square protesting the power tariff hike and erratic power supply. The protesters said that the tariff hike would hit the poor consumers hard and demanded its immediate roll back.
Speaking to OMMCOM NEWS, CPM leader Janardan Pati said, “The government has increased power tariff 5 times in last 7 years for the common consumers. But they have deliberately excluded the industrialists from the tariff hike. They are saying that power companies are facing loss but they won’t do anything to recover the electricity bills of industrialists which stand around Rs 6,000 crores.”
“We are saying that the whole energy policy should be replaced. The electricity which is being produced from our resources should be delivered to the common consumers and public institutions. But they are doing everything to exploit them,” he added.
Notably, the Odisha Electricity Regulatory Commission (OERC) increased electricity tariff by 10 paise for retail consumers for 2017-18 in the month of March.
