PESHAWAR: The Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) on Saturday announced that it would soon outsource more than 18 high-loss feeders in four regions of the province and Khyber Circle, Peshawar.

Pesco chief executive officer Engineer Shabbir Ahmad Jilani told a news conference at Wapda House here that the company was going to outsource high-loss 18 feeders in Peshawar, Bannu, Shabqadar, Hazara and Khyber Circle within two weeks due to high power theft and low dues recovery.

He said the company was taking measures to overcome loadshedding and that there was zero-loadshedding on more than 309 feeders in the province.

Company chief blames outages on power theft, overloading, system constraints

Mr Jilani said the company was carrying out loadshedding only in those areas, where consumers didn’t pay power bills.

He said loadshedding was being carried out for two hours on feeders with 10-20 losses and for 12 hours on the feeders with 80 percent losses.

The Pesco CEO said the company had suffered an additional loss of Rs5 billion due to power theft in the province.

He said a campaign had launched to recover Rs10 billion from more than 3.2 million consumers in the province.

Mr Jilani complained that some police stations had failed to crack down on power thieves in their respective areas.

He said around 500 megawatts electricity was required for Swat but only 150 megawatts was supplied from the system.

The Pesco CEO said loadshedding was being carried out in Peshawar due to work on the Bus Rapid Transport project.

About power supply, Mr Jilani said KP received 1,600 megawatts electricity from the national grid, while the duration of loadshedding had gone down in line with the federal government’s policy.

He said the company faced a loss of Rs91 billion due to the outstanding dues against the federal government, provincial government departments and commercial, agriculture and industrial consumers.

Mr Jilani said the Pesco was supplying electricity to more than 3.2 million people through 972 feeders across the province.

He said the electric supply had improved due to the completion of several projects worth billions of rupees during the last 10 months.

The Pesco CEO said the projects included the establishment of a grid station, 38 power transformers, three transmission lines and feeders.

He said the company would initiate three development projects worth billion of rupees under the Asian Development Bank assistance, while around 46 projects had been planned under the public sector development programme in future to ensure smooth supply of electricity to consumers.

Mr Jilani said of the total electricity feeders, around 72 feeders had reported 10-20 percent losses, 95 feeders 20-30 percent losses, 82 feeders 30-40 percent losses, 163 feeders 40-60 percent losses, 143 60-80 percent losses and 107 under 80 percent losses.

He said the company was carrying out loadshedding on more than 633 feeders with different regions but the federal government had decreased the duration of power outages for different categories.

Mr Jilani said power theft, overloading and system constraints had forced the company to carry out loadshedding.

He however said measures were being taken to achieve targets set by the federal government within the stipulated time to overcome those issues.

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2017