ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad Electric Supply Company (Iesco) and the Capital Development Authority (CDA) have yet to carry out an investigation to determine how much power the streetlights in Islamabad actually consume.

Both entities have been at odds for quite some time over the question of electricity consumption by the streetlights, resulting in controversy over the CDA’s power bill.

“On June 4, we decided to carry out the investigation, but so far no progress has been made in this regard as Iesco is not giving us time,” CDA’s Shahid Sohail said.

“After failing to get a favourable response from Iesco we conducted the survey of streetlights in F-6 sector on our own and submitted a report to Iesco which is lying unattended with the company,” he added.

Meanwhile, CDA spokesperson Asim Khichi feared that if the stand-off between the two persists, it would lead to situation similar to one that occurred in April and May this year, when the electricity connection of the CDA head office remained cut off for 40 days.

The CDA and Iesco dispute the number of units of power the streetlights consume. The Iesco claims that the consumption was around 3.7 million units per month, whereas the CDA maintains that 33,000 streetlights of Islamabad use around 1.8 million units per month.

Iesco maintained that a bill of around Rs1.8 billion was outstanding against the CDA, which was disputed by the civic body as a result the power supply to its head office was severed on April 25 last year.

However, after the intervention of Water and Power Secretary Nargis Sethi, on June 4, 2014, both reached a settlement.

“It was decided that the CDA will pay Rs300 million of the total arrears of Rs900 million for restoration of electricity and the rest will be paid in 18 installments,” the CDA spokesman said.

“We have calculated that the consumption was even less than 1.8 million units that is around Rs36 million as per the current electricity rates,” said CDA spokesman Asim Khichi.

“But Iesco kept billing us around Rs73 million,” he added.

CDA has even sent its detailed working to Iesco, which stated that more than half of streetlights are not operational as a part of energy conservation plan.

“Besides, there used to be loadshedding even in winters, and most importantly energy saver kind of nontraditional bulbs are being used to conserve electricity,” Mr Khichi added.

Incidentally, to resolve the issue, a joint investigation was held by CDA and Iesco officials some four months back but the results were rejected by the company.

The CDA officials expressed fears that if a solution was not reached in near future the situation could reach to its original status where differences of consumption might lead to severing of power to the CDA offices.

A senior Iesco official said the joint inquiry would start from the first week of July and will be completed by the 10th of this month.

“As streetlights vary from sector to sector, therefore determining consumption in each sector is necessary,” the official added.

Published in Dawn, July 3rd , 2014