SUKKUR: The chairman of the Board of Directors of the Sukkur Electric Power Company (Sepco), Iqbal Rajput, has said the board is not satisfied with the performance of the power utility’s staff.

The board had recommended to the federal ministry of power to take action against the delinquent officials but the ministry had not yet done anything in this regard, he said.

Talking to journalists here on Friday, Mr Rajput said the Sepco officials had burdened the consumers of Ghotki, Sukkur, Khairpur, Naushahro Feroze, Shikarpur, Jacobabad, Larkana, Kandhkot and Dadu districts with Rs4 billion by charging detection units as well as thrusting on them many units in excess of their actual consumption.

He said that complaints about excess and detection billing had increased. The senior officers had either been sidelined or kept idle in their homes by Sepco high-ups, he said. He said the minutes of the 15th and 16th BoD meetings had been communicated to the ministry of water & power and other authorities concerned which pertained to unsatisfactory performance of Sepco officials, violation of courts’ orders and posting of junior officers to senior posts. But the ministry had not yet taken any action against them, he said.

Mr Rajput said that in the last BoD meeting they had asked the Sepco management to resolve consumers’ problems on a priority basis and now a vigilance team led by the board director Imamuddin Khoso had been formed to review the situation and furnish a detailed report. “We’ll take prompt action on the report,” he added.

BoD director Imamuddin Khoso said the board had taken different steps to curb excess and detection billing in order to restore people’s confidence in the Sepco.

Despite the fact Sepco was not a profit making company 18 officers of grade-18 out of whom two have already retired have been upgraded to BPS-19 with retrospective financial benefits.

Mr Rajput said the officers had not been promoted on the board’s recommendation as the BoD had no such powers. But Sepco spokesman Engineer Noor Ahmed Soomro insisted the officers had been upgraded after getting ratification of their upgradation from the BoD.

A number of officials and lower staff of Sepco told Dawn on condition of anonymity that subdivisional officers, revenue officers, meter inspectors and meter readers were compelled by the superintending and executive engineers (operation side) to charge consumers extra units and issue detection bills in order to fake better performance at the end of the month, they said.

Many consumers told Dawn that despite clearing entire billed amount, they kept receiving inflated bills over and over again. But, they said, if they got the extra charges waived off through the agents of officers their problems were solved within minutes.

They claimed the Sepco linemen and meter readers had installed bogus meters for the consumers who paid them monthly bribe to consume more and pay less.

Sepco CEO Munawwar Nazir Abbasi did not attend calls made by the Dawn correspondent to get his version.

Published in Dawn, November 29th, 2014