HYDERABAD, July 12: The Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (Hesco), tops the list of power companies throughout the country as far as power theft is concerned and in most of the cases, theft is being committed with the connivance of Hesco staff who are trying to sabotage the recovery process and inciting the consumers to stage sit-ins.

This was stated by the Chief Executive of Hesco, Brig Tariq Arshad, at a news conference at the press club here on Friday.

He said that the services of 17 ‘black sheeps’ (officers) had already been terminated and 29 employees sent on compulsory retirement. Another 553 employees were awarded major and minor punishments, he added.

Criticizing the wave of protest against the Hesco, he said hardly 10 per cent of power thieves had been caught but Dharnas were being staged everywhere in advance by the remaining thieves to escape accountability.

The situation in the villages, he claimed, was even worse where hardly five per cent of the consumers paid their bills.

The Hesco chief further claimed that when action was initiated against the defaulters and power thieves, which was seldom done before, they started staging hunger strikes, sit-ins and demonstration to pressure the company.

He, however, made it clear that he would not accept any pressure and warned the power thieves that FIRs would be registered against them, their power connections would be snapped and the arrears would be recovered from them under the Land Revenue Act.

Brig Arshad said that when he assumed the charge of the company in March this year, there were 186,000 chronic defaulters who had never cared to pay their bills. By June 30, he indicated, the number of defaulters come down to 147,000.

He claimed that 95 per cent of the detection bills were correct but hastened to add that human error could not be ruled out in some cases for which he would not hesitate in tendering personal apology to the aggrieved party.

Defending the tough measures taken by him, Brig Arshad, who has worked in the same capacity with the Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) for three years, said that the situation at Hesco was 20 times worse than at the Lesco.

Recounting his consumer-friendly measures, he said that 113 Customers Service Centres were established at all the sub-divisions of the company and the complainants were being given written reply within a specified period.

He said that the revenue and all other offices had been declared out of bound to check corruption and bargaining.

To check power interruptions and breakdowns, he said, a “never centre” had been set up which had ready information about the causes of interruptions. Sometimes, power failure occurs due to a switch-off by the concerned officials, he explained.

The Hesco chief said that 50 more trolley-transformers would be made available shortly to replace the faulty transformers.

He said that an amount of Rs4.4 billion was outstanding against the private and Rs590 million against government consumers.