PESHAWAR, Jan 3: Instances of Wapda’s distribution wires, transformers and other items’ stealing are on the rise in the NWFP, with the provincial police mostly failing to check the trend.

Senior Pesco sources told this correspondent that over the past couple of months, cases of Wapda’s transformers and distribution wires getting stolen recorded a marked increase.

However, the culprits involved in the theft cases, reported to the police by Pesco, have not yet been identified nor the stolen items recovered.

“We want to keep the (distribution) system energized so that instances of stealing could be avoided,” said the Chief Executive, Pesco, Brig Khalid when approached to seek his comment. However, official sources said that in some cases, conductors and transformers went missing when the system was in running condition.

“Transformers go missing when the power supply is on,” said the official sources.

Brig Khalid said that in all the FIRs lodged by Pesco not a single stolen item was recovered nor any culprit nabbed.

It is presumed that in most of the cases, the stolen items found their way into the Federally Administered Tribal Areas where there were some 8,012 officially-installed transformers in addition to 3,241 illegal ones.