Piyush Goyal, Union Minister State (IC) for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy, presented National Awards for Meritorious Performance in Power Sector for the year 2013-14 at a function held here today. While addressing the award ceremony, Shri Goyal said that after last year’s achievements, there are more challenging tasks waiting ahead and these awards are only small steps achieving the collective dream of providing 24x7 affordable and quality power to the nation. He congratulated the winners by saying that awards are recognition of good work and encouragement to perform better in future. The Minister also called upon private sector to be part of the development journey of the country by contributing their share in lowering price and increasing quality of power, generating employment opportunities, creating better distribution systems etc.
A total of 34 awards are given in the fields of early completion of thermal and hydro power and transmission projects, performance of thermal, hydro and nuclear power stations, performance of distribution companies and rural distribution franchise, transmission system availability and environment management award scheme for coal based thermal power stations. Background:The award scheme was introduced by the Ministry of Power in 1983 for recognizing meritorious performance of thermal power stations. With the objective of developing a spirit of competition among the thermal, hydro and nuclear generating stations, transmission and distribution utilities in operations and early completion of projects, the scheme was update in 2004-05. The comprehensive award scheme inter-alia aims at encouraging personnel engaged in the power utilities to improve their efficiency and productivity.