28 March 2004	Sunday	06 Safar 1425

PESHAWAR, March 27: Officials of the Peshawar Electric Supply Company said that the reduced tariff facility was being misused in different parts of the province , causing considerable losses to both the provincial government and Wapda, officials said.

Sources said that Wapda had ascertained that in several instances communities were heavily relying on the electricity connections of the provincial public sector tube-wells - the monthly electricity bills of which are paid from the public exchequer.

Similarly, in some instances it had come to the knowledge of Wapda that inhabitants of private colonies had taken connections for the supply of electricity from the near-by public sector tube-wells.

In several of the cases, electricity meters installed at the provincial government owned irrigation and water supply tube- wells were found to be tempered by those involved in illegal practice of misusing the facility.

"Pesco replaced 100 per cent of the tempered and faulty electricity meters of tube-wells wherever we were asked for by the authorities concerned of the provincial government but even then the misuse of the discounted tariff is rampant in several of the NWFP's districts," said Brig Tahir Saeed, chief executive of Pesco.

According to him, the misuse of the facility is rampant in Karak, Bannu, Lakki Marwat and Dera Ismail Khan districts and some parts of the Hazara region of the Frontier province.

He said that irrigation tube-wells had been installed in areas which did not involve cultivable land in an apparent move to misuse the reduced tariff facility being extended by Wapda.

In accordance with an agreement between the Wapda and the provincial government, the provincial public sector tube-wells [meant for irrigation and water supply purposes] are charged the discounted tariff "D-1" which is applicable to the tube-wells installed under the salinity control and rehabilitation project (Scarp).

As part of the agreement, Wapda extends the reduced tariff facility to the provincial governments' owned tube-wells in exchange of exemption from payment of property tax against its assets in provinces.

The D-1 tariff involves per unit cost of Rs 5.06 [other than electricity duty and general sales tax] is much less than the tariff "D-2" applied to tube-wells being operated in the private sector in all the four provinces.

However, according to information gathered from different sources, while Wapda had benefited from the agreement under which it enjoyed exemption of property tax against its assets, the successive provincial governments, in the case of the NWFP, had not been able to take maximum benefit of the reduced tariff facility because of illegal connections taken from the electricity supply lines of the public sector tube-wells.

Sources in the provincial government said that several of the tube-wells, in various districts, got disconnected their electricity connections due to non-payment of monthly electricity bills.

A senior officer of the water supply and sanitation department of the district government, Karak, told Dawn that Wapda charged as high as Rs 800,000 monthly electricity charges to single tube well leaving the district government with no option but not to pay the bill.

" We have done our job by replacing the tempered electricity meters, now it is the provincial government's responsibility to check high prevalence of misuse of electricity connections of its tube-wells, particularly in the southern districts of the province," said the Pesco chief executive.

Sources in Pesco said that high-side monthly electricity bills of tube-wells had nothing to do with the Company.