PESHAWAR, March 16: Several NWFP government employees residing in official residences have not been paying their monthly electricity bills, which has resulted in considerable financial loss, sources told Dawn on Tuesday.
According to official sources, the government is believed to have suffered considerable financial losses due to the misuse of special codes allotted by Wapda to the electricity consumers pertaining to the provincial public sector entities, for the recovery/payment of monthly electricity bills.
Several of the employees manipulated the official code system to their advantage hoodwinking their respective departments and bosses in an effort to evade payment of the monthly electricity charges of their official residences.
"It has been found in several of the cases that electricity bills are not being issued in the names of government employees occupying official residence, instead the bills of their residential connections are issued against the code number(s) allotted to the public sector consumers," said an official source.
In this way payment of monthly charges against such bills were found to have been made by the public sector entities concerned instead of the government employees occupying official residences.
Employees managed to make Wapda issue electricity bills of their official residences against the codes allotted to their respective departments, by deceiving the concerned official quarters, said the sources.
There are about 22,000 electricity connections across the province - including thousands of connections installed at official accommodations housing as many public sector employees.
"The government departments, particularly in remote districts do not have a proper system to keep under check payment of electricity dues by employees using official accommodation," said an officer.
The government agencies came to know about this fact only recently during the course of reconciliation of accounts by Wapda and the departments of the provincial and district governments.
"The exact number of those employees who have hoodwinked the government departments is not clearly known, but during the course of reconciliation of accounts it was ascertained that public exchequer has been suffering considerable financial losses due to the government's own employees," said an official of a district government.
The government, said other official source, had decided to rectify the situation, and Wapda and the departments concerned would be moved to ensure that monthly electricity bills should be issued against the name of the employee(s) using electricity connections installed at the government owned residences.
Similarly, it had also come to the knowledge of the government high ups that employees occupying official residences in colonies - built on land owned by public sector institutions - were involved in electricity theft.
"It has been ascertained that some of the employees have taken a direct connection for their residences from the electricity supply line of their office - situated in close proximity to their residences in some colonies," said the sources.
In some of the instances it had been found that the employees did not regularly clear the electricity bills of their official residences after shifting from one official residence to other causing complications for the new occupants and the concerned official circles.
