QUETTA, Jan 10: The federal government has agreed to provide Rs1 billion for completing village electrification work in 1,300 villages across the country, including those of Balochistan.

This was stated by Wapda Chairman Lt-Gen (retd) Zulfiqar Ali Khan during an open katchehri here on Friday.

He said the federal government had also provided funds to the provincial government for the purpose. These funds would be spent on such projects through Nazimeen.

The Wapda chief informed the people that he had requested Jam Yousuf, the provincial CM, to release enough funds to the Nazimeen so that electri-fication work could be launch-ed in new villages of the province.

He said a reduction of Rs400 had been made in electricity connection fee for domestic consumers while a concessional fee of Rs3,500 had been fixed for the rural-area consumers in Balochistan.

He said zamindars and growers of Balochistan had been asked to pay their outstanding electricity dues by Jan 31, this year, as these had grown from Rs290 million in November last to Rs380 million now.

“This situation is not acceptable for us any more,” he said, pointing out that already 40 per cent of the charges for power consumed by the growers were being paid for by the provincial government, 30 per cent by Wapda and 20 per cent by the federal government.

“The growers have to pay only a fixed amount of Rs4,000 per month,” he added.

He said that work on Quetta-Mastung-Kalat and Quetta-Yaro-Pishin transmission lines was in progress and, once completed, it would resolve the problem of electricity shortages.

The Wapda chairman dispelled the impression that a blanket ban had been slapped on the installation of agricultural tube-wells in the province.

He said a temporary ban had been imposed in some areas but there was no such ban in Turbat, Quetta, Mastung, Nasirabad, Loralai, Kohlu and Barkhan districts.

He said the ban was imposed in those areas where Wapda was facing overloading problem on its grid stations.

About complaints concerning wrong meter reading, he said the meter readers would be terminated from service if they took wrong readings three times.