LAHORE: With seven chief executive officers (CEOs), five of them on an ad hoc basis, in the last five years and three Boards of Directors in as many years, the Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) continues its downward slide in the ‘performance chart’.

Each Board of Directors is supposed to work for three years.

Disgruntled Lesco officials say the rot set in by such policies has worsened over the years as is evident from over-billing, wrong billing, unscheduled outages and impervious attitude of employees towards customers.

“The PML-N came into power with a promise to end this penchant for ad hoc working but it has failed to clean the mess,” says an official of the company. Instead, he says, it is continuing with the same set-up and, even dangerously, with those very policies it inherited from the PPP government.

“Five chief executive officers appointed in the last three years were posted on an ad hoc basis, turning this top administrative post into a temporary assignment and hurting the company,” he says.

According to the officials and record of the company, the rot set in when the PPP government appointed Muhammad Azhar Iqbal as CEO on Oct 8, 2009. He was removed within next six months and Saleem Akhtar chipped in as CEO on April 8, 2010. He kept the post till Sept 30, 2011, when Sharafat Sial took over as “an interim arrangement in interest of work.”

Within next 10 months, Sial was replaced with Ahsan Elahi on a “current charge basis” on June 19, 2012. Within next three months, Zia Lateef came in when he was “temporarily allowed to look after the work of post of the CEO” on Aug 31 the same year. He had hardly settled when Muhammad Saleem was “temporarily allowed as stopgap arrangement to look after the work of the CEO” on Nov 19, 2012.

On July 12, 2013, Arshad Rafiq was inducted as “acting CEO for disposal of day-to-day affairs of the Lesco.”

Giving the situation a turn for worse, the company has had three Boards of Directors in the last three years whereas each one of them should have tenure of three years. The first one was appointed on Feb 7, 2011 when the ministry appointed a 16-member board to rule the company. It was replaced by another board on Feb 22, 2013. The last 10-member BoD came in on July 3, 2013 and is still in place though its chairman has already resigned.

“The Lesco situation is reflective of the bigger malaise that afflicts the sector,” says a former head of the Pakistan Electric Power Company. The situation in other distribution as well as generation and transmission companies is not different, he says.

During the last six years, these ad hoc policies have led to the collapse of the entire governance structure in the sector; be it customer services, billing and revenue collection. These three vital signs are deteriorating and the sectoral record stands witness to it, he says.

The PML-N government had promised to improve the situation but is focused only on generation side, allowing fall of the transmission and distribution systems. It is yet to appoint even a single CEO of any of the 13 crucial power-sector companies despite promise of doing it quickly and bringing efficiency in the system, he concludes.