PESHAWAR, Jan 8: The Peshawar Electric Supply Company's efforts to make Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees (CAR) recover millions of rupees power arrears from Afghan refugees failed.

Pesco, a subsidiary of the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda), owes over Rs 55 million arrears against Afghan refugees living in camps falling under the jurisdiction of its Khyber and Peshawar circles.

"We have moved CAR several times to help us recover arrears but our requests remained without much success," said Baghdad Shah, chief engineer of Pesco.

In accordance with the government's policy, CAR appoints a contractor for collecting monthly electricity charges from Afghan refugee families getting electricity from a specific transformer.

The refugee population living in camps, established in and around Peshawar, are getting electricity from some 208 transformers, of which 170 fall under the jurisdiction of Pesco's Khyber circle and remaining 38 come under the control of its Peshawar circle.

According to the government rules, the contractors are responsible to recover monthly electricity charges from refugee families falling under area of their (contractors') jurisdiction and ensure monthly payment to Pesco.

"In several of the cases the contractors resorted to default despite having recovered monthly charges from the refugee families," said Mr Shah while addressing a press conference here on Friday.

He said that Pesco owed Rs 47 million from the contractors falling under the jurisdiction of Khyber circle whereas Peshawar circle's arrears payable by such contractors stood at over Rs 18.6 million. "We can hardly do any thing directly to take action against the defaulting contractors except to move CAR with a request to help us recover our money," said Mr Shah. Khurasan camp, involving largest number of refugees on the outskirts of Peshawar, alone owes Rs six million to Pesco after the CAR's appointed contractors defaulted despite having collected monthly charges from the power consumers from among the refugee families.

Mr Shah said that Pesco's letters to CAR under which it had been requested to intervene did not receive encouraging response as the commissionerate, due to its own administrative considerations, did not come up as a big help to Pesco.

He said that after failing to get desired results from its efforts to recover the blocked funds Pesco had disconnected power supply to thousands of consumers who were receiving electricity through 28 transformers.

In some of the cases, power has been disconnected several months ago, whereas, in one particular case people getting power from a specific transformer were without electricity for more than a year.

Engineer Iqbal Ali Shah, superintending engineer of Pesco's Peshawar circle and Fazal-i-Khaliq, superintending engineer of Pesco's Khyber circle, speaking on the occasion said that their organization's efforts to provide electricity at low rates did not receive encouraging response after the company accumulated huge amount in arrears. They said that in some of the instances the contractors had gone back to Afghanistan without paying power charges which they had already recovered from the refugee families.

In some of the instances, they added, contractors were over- charging to refugee families.

"We charge contractors Rs 1.40 to Rs 2.37 per unit whereas in some of the cases, they are charging over Rs four per unit," said director of Pesco commercial, who was also present on the occasion.

The Pesco officials said that the company had also lodged an FIR against three contractors and some of them had also been arrested.