ISLAMABAD, March 9: The government has asked the governor and chief minister of the NWFP to take steps for the recovery of Rs35 billion electricity arrears from consumers in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).

Sources said that a meeting of the ministry of water and power and Wapda authorities on Thursday decided to take up the matter with President Gen Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to prevail upon the NWFP leadership to recover the outstanding amount and facilitate the Tribal Electric Supply Company (Tesco) to install meters.

The meeting, presided over by Minister for Water and Power Liaquat Ali Jatoi, was told that the sell off of the Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) would not be possible if its arrears were not cleared.

Wapda Chairman Tariq Hameed said that he had taken up the matter with the governor and chief minister of the NWFP for a couple of times. They had promised to solve the problem but there was no positive outcome, he added.

The Tesco chief executive also expressed his inability to recover arrears — which are normally based on estimates — because of the non-cooperative attitude of the local administration.

The minister asked the Wapda chairman and Tesco chief executive to chalk out a plan to be discussed with the governor and government of the NWFP, for bringing tribal areas in the net of billing and ensure recovery of arrears.

He directed all the Distribution Companies (Discos) of Wapda to reduce line losses and expedite the recovery campaign against defaulters and ensure uninterrupted power supply to consumers and improve services.

He asked the Wapda companies to gear up efforts to meet the target of village electrification as well as provision of tube-well connections to people on priority basis.

Earlier, Mr Hameed in his presentation said the overall line losses of the Wapda companies have been reduced by about 1.0 per cent and efforts were in progress to further reduce the line losses by the year’s end.

He informed the meeting that 13,000 villages would to be electrified and 15,000 tube-well connections would be provided by the end of the current fiscal.

He said that 9,000 villages have so far been electrified and 13,000 tube-well connections have been provided till January 2006.