PESHAWAR: Containing high line losses has turned out to be a big challenge for the Peshawar Electric Supply Company.

Recently, state minister for water and power Abid Sher Ali threatened suspension of electric supply from 11 feeders in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa over high line losses.

A senior Pesco official told Dawn that the federal government should conduct a survey to know why the people were illegally using hooks for electricity.

He said in most cases, the Pesco employees were hand in glove with power thieves, so controlling line losses was almost impossible.

The basic issue pointed out by some politicians and consumers is that there is no distinction between defaulters and those regularly paying power bills as the latter have to face prolonged power cuts round the clock. An instance in this respect is the area of Shaheen Colony, Umeedabad, Nasir Korona (PK-4), where majority of the people are paying bills but face 16 hours loadshedding.

The local residents said they had collected the copies of the paid monthly bills to be presented to the Pesco officials to dispel the assumption that they were not paying bills.

They said their only mistake was illegal connections in some other localities connected with their area feeder.

The people said Pesco officials had never bothered to visit the area at least to ascertain who paid bills and who the defaulters were.

According to them, electricity remains suspended for two continuous hours and restores for the next one hour only.

They said the one-hour electric supply was next to nil as it usually suffered due to low voltage, fluctuation and other short intervals.

Scores of students, journalists and government employees said they even could not utilise the internet facility digital subscriber line due to the faulty power supply.

They said the locality consisted of two hundreds houses or more and most of its residents were employees of different governments or semi-government departments, including PIA, Airport Security Force, Civil Aviation Authority, law-enforcement agencies, customs department, Wapda or media organisations, who paid monthly power bills regularly.

They said they should not be punished for the crime if that was committed by anyone else in the shape of illegal power connections and that Pesco should change supply line to Gulberg feeder to address the problem.

On Sunday, the residents of several villages of Charsadda Road, Khazana held a protest demonstration against power cuts and blocked the road for hours.

When contacted, PML-N leader and member of the Pesco board of directors Nasir Khan Musazai said taking action against the defaulters was a compulsion of the power company as the line losses were unaffordable any longer.

He said in Peshawar, 10 feeders faced 95 per cent of line losses and 40 feeders 80 per cent losses, while the power company was unable even to meet its routine expenditure and salary in the prevailing situation.

According to him, the monthly losses of Pesco have reached Rs3 billion and if it is not controlled at this stage, the entire system will collapse to the misery of the people.

About the vote bank of PML-N, he said his party would get further strength as majority of the people were ready to pay bills for reduction of the loadshedding duration.

The PML-N leader said Pesco officials should move out of their offices and listen to the people’s problems.

Also, PML-N provincial general secretary Rehmat Salam Khattak appreciated the government’s efforts for the improvement of power supply system and expressed the hope that new provincial governor Sardar Mehtab Khan would play vital role in solution to the matter.

He admitted that taking action against power thieves and defaulters would cause damages to the party but it was necessary for overhauling the power system once for all.

Mr Khattak said the federal government was busy planning construction of new dams in different districts to overcome loadshedding.