FEDCO wins SKOCH Award for Skill Development through its SEFALI programme

Bhubaneswar: Feedback Energy Distribution Company (FEDCO) has been bestowed with the SKOCH Award 2020 under the Skill Development category for the company’s SEFALI initiative that aims at empowering community members through women self-help groups.
Under its incentive-led SEFALI (Society’s Empowerment for Assuring Livelihood) programme, FEDCO engages WSHGs for metering, billing and collection of energy charges from its consumers.
FEDCO received this Skill Development award in Gold category for SKOCH during a function recently held in New Delhi. SKOCH is a leading think tank dealing with socio-economic issues. SKOCH Award recognises the work done by corporates in the areas of governance, inclusive growth, excellence in technology and applications, change management, corporate leadership, corporate governance, citizen service delivery, capacity building and empowerment.
FEDCO’s SEFALI initiative’s origination comes from a model created by government of Odisha’s Mission Shakti. As a successful model wherein government policy and private sector implementation ensured best results for social transformation and operational efficiency, SEFALI started with the Company’s Nayagarh Electrical Division in 2013 where tremendous improvement in electricity distribution was achieved with the involvement of local women based Self Help Groups.
Mr Samarjit Mohanty, CEO at FEDCO, who was at the event to receive the award, said “It is an honour for the Company to have received the award on behalf of all the Women SHGs, who have been dedicatedly working under the support and guidance of FEDCO.”
“SKOCH awards is one of the highest recognition of our efforts to make a change to the community by socially mobilizing and empowering WSHGs as well as providing our electricity consumers with a different and more responsive service experience. We are happy that our support to WSHGs in addressing consumer issues by continuously training them, has created a hassle-free conducive environment for them to operate in and helped them to grow and be more empowered socially and financially,” said Mr Devtosh Chaturvedi, Managing Director, FEDCO.
FEDCO has established an SHG managing team of social experts to provide support to the SHG group on a daily basis. Through review meetings and interactions with the SHG, the team tries to monitor, guide, motivate, and support the SHGs with an aim to increase their productivity.
FEDCO’s engagement with the local community, through 139 women SHGs as partners in billing and collection, has helped the DISCOM to improve the collection. FEDCO’s participation in Odisha has ensured AT&C loss reduction by 26% and financial turnaround, making ARR-ACS cash positive within 5 years of operation in a predominately (up to 90%) rural area.