LAHORE/ISLAMABAD: The Prime Minister’s Adviser on Water and Power announced on Monday that the head of the Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) and one of the company’s directors have been sacked and FIRs registered against them. The announcement comes as an inquiry into allegations of illegal diversion of electricity incriminated the two men, Dawn has learnt.

Lesco Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Arshad Rafique and Director for Operations Mehboob Ali are said to have illegally diverted electricity to areas of their choosing and took money from ‘influential clients’ to keep their electricity running during forced or scheduled power shutdowns.

Accompanied by newly-appointed Water and Power Secretary Nargis Sethi, special adviser Musadiq Malik told a press conference in Islamabad on Monday that both the senior officers were accused of illegally diverting electricity to factories in Lahore. “The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) is investigating and everyone behind this scam will be brought to justice,” he said.

“(The two men) are accused of manipulating loadshedding schedules by cutting the supply of electricity to residential areas and diverting it to factories,” Mr Malik said, adding that the two men were also guilty of misreporting figures on line losses in their jurisdiction to the ministry.

Mr Malik also revealed that the accused had fudged figures sent to the ministry.

“They told us that Lesco faced 11 per cent theft, but when we verified these numbers, theft was found to be more than 22 per cent,” he said.

The two men were picked up from their residences at around 1am on Monday. According to a senior FIA officer in Lahore, they were arrested on the basis of information provided by Mehboob Ali, alleged cohort of Rafique. He told investigators he was just following orders, saying: “How we can disobey his orders? So we followed these orders, which ended up inconveniencing the public at large.”

According to Ali, the official said the mismanagement in Lesco was massive and was done only for vested interests.

The official said that while describing the CEO’s actions, Ali told the inquiry: “If eight hours of loadshedding was scheduled for residential localities, power would remain suspended for 10 hours. The electricity saved this way would be diverted to areas of the CEO’s choosing, such as factories. If the schedule called for 10 hours of outages for industries, their power was cut for longer and the surplus electricity routed to specific residential or commercial localities in exchange for kickbacks”.

In his statement, Ali alleged that this practice had been going on for some time and that others, including some of Lesco’s executive engineers (XENs), were also involved in the load management scam.

The official revealed that Rafique was also found to be involved in the purchase of substandard transformers and he made money off construction projects as well. “However, inquiries into these allegations have yet to be concluded,” he said.

FIA officials said that they would consider treating Ali as the ‘approver’ of the case against his boss in view of his cooperation with investigators.

Meanwhile, Lesco General Manager Abdul Rehman assumed acting charge as the company’s chief executive on Monday and, as his first act, attended an emergency meeting at the Ministry of Water and Power. “In the meeting, the secretary focused on Lesco and ordered Mr Rehman to follow the loadshedding and power shutdown schedules to the letter,” a Lesco official told Dawn.

Published in Dawn, June 3rd, 2014