ISLAMABAD: To go through the list of public sector defaulters of the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) is to realise that virtually every single government department at both the central and provincial levels has contributed towards bankrupting the power sector.

Documentary evidence available with Dawn explains, list after list, which government departments, starting from defence forces to autonomous bodies, provincial government departments, and down to municipal corporations, owe hundreds of millions of rupees to Wapda.

The recovery of these dues is as challenging a task for the government as adding more megawatts (MW) to the national grid. In total, as of Jan-Feb this year, the outstanding power dues stand at Rs492 billion — the private sector owes Rs366bn while the public sector owes the rest.

In the list of public-sector defaulters, the Sindh government leads with Rs52bn, followed by the AJK government (Rs32bn), the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government (Rs20bn) the federal government (Rs8bn) and the Punjab government (Rs6bn). The Balochistan government has consumed electricity worth Rs4bn and has yet to pay the bill.

Further delving provides more facts. For example, under the list of federal government defaulters falls the army, which has an over Rs1bn electricity bill pending, followed by the Pakistan Air Force (Rs278m), and the Pakistan Navy (Rs33m).

On the civilian side, there are many government departments at the federal level which are defaulting on their electricity bills. These include the Capital Development Authority (Rs2.10bn), the Senate Chairman’s office and residence (Rs112m), the information ministry (Rs211m) and the Ministry of States and Frontier Regions (Rs155m).

Other defaulters are the Frontier Corps (Rs149m), the Hyderabad Cantonment Board (Rs125m), the Chaklala Cantonment Board (Rs270m), Pakistan PWD (Rs112m) and the Pakistan Telecommunications Corporation (Rs168m).

PROVINCIAL GOVTS: Provincial governments too have a long and interesting list of defaulters. In Punjab, for example, particularly in Lahore, a number of tehsil municipal administrations (TMA) have millions of rupees outstanding against them. These include the TMA Ravi town (Rs268m), the TMA Data Ganj Bakhsh town (Rs209m), the TMA Allama Iqbal town (Rs219m), and the TMA DG Khan (Rs365m).

The Sindh government too keeps a long list of departments which have over the years let their electricity bills pile up, some of them running into billions. These include WASA Hyderabad (Rs4.4bn), the Hyderabad Development Authority (Rs2.63bn), the Sindh public health engineering department (Rs2.7bn), Sindh SCARP (Rs1.01bn), the Sindh police department (Rs864m) and the Sindh Irrigation Department (Rs662m).

In Balochistan, its health engineering department tops the list with electricity bills worth Rs3.54bn, followed by the education department (Rs334m), the police department (Rs112m), the health department (Rs191m) and the provincial irrigation and power department (Rs23m).

The KP provincial government’s defaulters include TMA town-I Peshawar (Rs147m), the works and service department (Rs65m), TMA town-I Peshawar street light (Rs85m) and the TMA town-I Peshawar tube-well (Rs88m). A major chunk which the KP government had to pay is Rs18.60bn under the heading of tariff differential.

Talking to Dawn, a senior official of Wapda said the government has to go for some out-of-the-box solution for the recovery of these pending electricity bills. One of the best solutions which has been discussed at the Council of Common Interests was at-source deduction from the share of the provincial governments concerned from the federal divisible pool. However, except for the Punjab government, the others are opposing the suggestion.