QUETTA: The Quetta Electric Supply Company (Qesco) has decided to cut off connections of all those subscribers, including federal and provincial governments’ departments and agriculture tube wells, who have not paid their outstanding bills.

The outstanding dues of Qesco have reached up to over Rs1 trillion with only agriculture consumers are defaulter of Rs81 billion.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Qesco, Engineer Balighuz Zaman, said here on Monday that the company’s outstanding dues against the Balochistan government and its departments were Rs5.2 billion and federal government’s departments Rs590 million. Commercial, domestic and other consumers are defaulters of over Rs6 billion.

He said the Balochistan government had also to pay Rs10.2 billion on the head of subsidy given to agriculture subscribers. The federal government had paid their share in account of agriculture subsidy, he added.

According to a Qesco spokesperson, the CEO had set up four teams in all circles in view of the orders of the federal government to launching recovery campaign for outstanding dues.

“These teams would launch recovery campaign across the province to recover outstanding dues of Qesco pending against agriculture, commercial and domestic consumers and government departments,” he said, adding that the recovery teams would submit their reports to the commercial officer of Qesco on daily bases.

He said it had been decided that electricity connections of all defaulters would be cut off.

A Qesco magistrate would take action against those found involved in electricity theft, he added.

The spokesperson said it had been observed that agriculture consumers were even reluctant to pay Rs6,000 per month.

“Qesco is facing financial crisis and it is not possible for it to continue anymore the supply of electricity to wilful defaulters,” he said.

The spokesperson said the company had decided to increase the duration of electricity loadshedding in areas from where recovery of dues was slow.