December 1, 2001	Saturday	Ramazan 15, 1422

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LAHORE, Nov 30: The suspension of work at Ghazi Brotha project is costing Wapda $1 million per day and the authority is working hard to get the Italian contractor back to save further loss.

Wapda chairman Lt Gen Zulfiqar Ali Khan told newsmen here on Friday that the Italians had fabricated a lame excuse when they claimed that their government had suspended their work permit due to the Afghan situation.

According to him, there were 15 other foreign companies working on Wapda projects in the country but none thought it fit to leave.

To a question, he said Wapda had moved no petition for the increase of tariff.

About Wapda’s arrears, that now stand at Rs36 billion, he said that a mechanism had been finalized in a recent meeting with the president. According to the formula, all public sector departments would pay 50 per cent of their dues till Dec 5 and the rest by Dec 31. The government would make deduction at source after the deadline, he said.

COMPLAINTS: The chairman said: “Wapda was concerned about customers’ complaints and it has decided to further sub-divide sub-divisions to better customer service. In future, no detection bill will be charged for broken seals and torn bonds stickers on the metres. Wapda authorities will have to prove theft of electricity through historical data otherwise no detection bill can be charged. The bill will not be for more than three months in any case,” he said.

Any sub-division generating 15 per cent more revenues would get a part of it to be distributed among its employees.

Any metre reader guilty of three over-reading would be fired and XEN and SDOs would be required to check metres on daily basis to remove any discrepancy, he said.