2 May 2005	Monday	22 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1426

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PESHAWAR, May 1: The Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) is reported to have rejected the NWFP government’s claim of Rs857 million on account of excess billing. “The government has been informed that no such payment is due against the company,” a Pesco spokesman said.

Sources said that in an official communiqué to the provincial government, the Pesco director (commercial) had rejected the validity of the government’s claim that the company had to pay or adjust in future bills an amount of Rs857 million.

The company, said the sources, had taken the position that no payment on account of excess billing was due against Pesco after it had already settled its accounts with the government for the 2003-04 financial year.

The government, however, has prepared a claim against the power company taking position that the provincial public sector consumers were charged inflated bills during the 2003-04 financial year — a stand rejected by the Pesco spokesman.

“We have not received their claim in writing and deemed necessary to reject the claim, on our own, after coming to know about it through a newspaper report,” said the spokesman, while explaining his organization’s stand on the issue.

However, sources in the chief minister’s secretariat said that the matter would be taken up with Pesco high-ups at an appropriate forum.

The provincial government, according to its functionaries, had a plan to take up the matter with the Wapda chairman on April 27 when he held a meeting, at Islamabad, with Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani.

The chief minister, however, did not take it up with the Wapda chairman because of certain other issues on which the provincial government was more keen to get favours from the chairman.

The Pesco spokesman also challenged the provincial government’s stand that the company was sending the NWFP Chief Minister’s House bills for 96 connections while it had only six.

Referring to a news report carried by Dawn on April 26 — under which an official of the provincial government was quoted as having said: “The reconciliation drive established that the Chief Minister’s House had six electricity connections and not 96 as Pesco’s record had shown” — the spokesman said that the situation was misinterpreted.

He clarified that the Chief Minister’s Secretariat had a total of 90 electricity connections since long, of which 52 were disconnected in a line with a request by the secretariat.

Following which Pesco stopped sending bills against those 52 connections.

Out of the remaining 38 electricity connections, added the spokesman, some 21 belonged to public sector power consumers which did not come under the purview of the CM’s Secretariat as a result they were also removed from the secretariat’s list and their bills were being sent to their relevant departments after being asked for by the authorities concerned of the provincial government.

Officials of the CM’s Secretariat, however, said the secretariat experienced discrepancies as a result of making payment against electricity bills which did not belong to it. They said that it was Pesco’s responsibility to send “right bills to the right place”.