Coming under pressure of different employees' unions, Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), which manages all transmission lines in the country, decided not to send its representatives in the board of directors of NTGC. As NEA has shown unwillingness to join the board of NTGC, its stake has been put under the Ministry of Finance (MoF) for the time being.Ministries of energy, finance, defense, home affairs, forest and soil Conservation, Science, technology and environment, and land reforms and management are the promoters of NTGC. The board of NTGC will have representations from all the ministries. Its board meeting, which will be chaired by energy secretary, has been scheduled for next week.
NTGC's prospectus says it will bring all the transmission line of and above 33 kv under its ambit. It also says the company will sort out all the problems that transmission line projects have been facing.
The task of unbundling three tasks of NEA -- generation, transmission and distribution -- was envisioned in Hydropower Development Policy 2001. But it remained in paper for all these years.
Energy Secretary Rajendra Kishore Kshetri said they need to do some homework to bring NEA on board by addressing concerns of first. "Work on asset evaluation as well as preparation of incentive package for employees of transmission department of NEA is going on at present," said Kshetri.
NEA had not sent its representative to sign the prospectus for months after the cabinet decision to form the company in February. Because of this, the company was registered only in the third week of July after revising the prospectus.
Employees of NEA say they are not against the decision to form a separate company to manage transmission lines. Talking to Republica, Amrit Bahadur Khapung, leader of a trade union at NEA, said they were not against unbundling of NEA. "We have only asked MoE to evaluate assets of all transmission line projects and omit a provision in NTGC's bylaws that says employees cannot form trade union at the company," he added.
Mukesh Raj Kafle, managing director of NEA, said they are not convinced that the new company will handle transmission line projects in a more efficient manner. "There has not been sufficient discussion on the issue," he added.
Energy Secretary Kshetri said they have started discussion with United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for taking expert assistance through Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) for unbundling of NEA.
MCC, which is an independent US agency dedicated to fighting global poverty by stimulating broad-based, private sector-led economic growth, picked Nepal for its compact program last year.
The government provides fund for development of transmission lines every year. But NEA has been failing to spend the amount for the past many years due its work burden. It is because of this fact that the government initiated plan to separate distribution and generation functions of NEA.
Transmission line projects like Thankot-Chapagaun-Bhaktapur Transmission Line and Pathlaiya-Parwanipur Transmission Line are suffering from various factors like problem in land acquisition, protest of locals, and problem in clearing forests, among others.
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