HYDERABAD: There is no end in sight to the woes of power consumers in the province despite tall claims by government functionaries, forcing the weary consumers to appeal for intervention by the National Accountability Bureau and Rangers.

In Hyderabad, office-bearers of Hyderabad Samaji Ittehad Naeem Ahmed Noorani and Habib Ahmed Qureshi said at news conference at the press club on Thursday that the NAB chairman, federal minister for water and power and director general of Rangers should take action against issuance of detection and inflated bills to consumers by the Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (Hesco).

They appealed to NAB to conduct a thorough probe into rampant corruption in the Hesco and inflated bills scam and demanded the federal government immediately privatise the power utility.

The Hesco officials were committing massive corruption by issuing inflated bills and detection bills to poor and honest consumers. All meter readers, linemen, line superintendents, sub-division officers, executive engineers and other staff were involved in patronising around 25,000 illegal connections in katchi abadis and areas along the Indus river embankments from Latifabad Unit No11 to Unit 4, they alleged.

They said the units thus consumed by the power thieves were added to electricity bills of genuine and honest consumers. The officials were usually not available at their offices and if they did come across consumers some day, they misbehaved with them to scare them away without hearing their complaints, they said.

In Khanpur Mahr, a large number of villagers staged a demonstration and burnt tyres in front of Sepco office in protest against disconnection of power supply to 10 villages for the past one month. The villagers said the Sepco had cut off power supply to their villages without any justification and officials of the power utility were demanding bribe to restore it power. They would continue the protest till power supply was not restored, they warned.

The protesters, however, dispersed peacefully after SDO of Sepco assured them of restoration of power supply.

In Mirpurkhas division, the Hesco’s practice to issue fake detection bills continued unabated and there is no one to which the weary consumers can turn to for complaint.

Hesco officials said on condition of anonymity that the power utility had failed to control power theft, forcing them to issue fake detection bills or average bills in order to cover line losses.

Sources said that complaints against issuance of fake and false detection bills were piling up in the office of XEN Hesco but to no avail.

Sepco, workers join hands

LARKANA: Leaders of Wapda Hydro Electric Central Labour Union and officials of Sukkur Electric Power Company (Sepco) vowed on Thursday to make joint efforts to rid the power utility of illegal connections and kundas and speed up dues recovery drive with a new zeal to pull Sepco out of the financial crisis.

The union leaders Abdul Latif Nizamani, Khursheed Khan, Iqbal Qaimkhani and others urged union workers at a gathering at 132-kV grid station to stand up to defaulters as this time the company would stand by them.

At present, Sepco had to recover Rs96 billion from defaulters, which was a huge burden on the company’s failing financial health, they said.

The gathering was attended by labour leaders from all over Sindh, Lahore and top officials of Sepco and Multan Electric Power Company (Mepco). The chief executive officer of Sepco, Muzaffar Ali Abbasi, was chief guest on the occasion.

The union leaders criticised government’s anti-labour policy which, they said, had been imposed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

The Sepco chief said that of the huge burden of dues, the government connections owed the power utility around Rs36 billion. The recovery was hardly 45 per cent from 500,000 consumers of which more than 200,000 connections were permanently disconnected but stealing electricity secretly, he said.

The Sepco chief urged ‘kunda users’ to get their connections regularised and announced providing them new connection and meter free of cost.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2015

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