PESHAWAR, June 28: Chief Executive of the Peshawar Electric Supply Company Brigadier Tahir Saeed Malik has said the company would receive gradual increase in funding by Wapda over the next five years for the improvement of outdated power distribution system.

The Pesco spent around one billion rupees during the outgoing fiscal on development projects in the Frontier province which is a record in the history of Wapda.

In an interview here on Saturday, Brigadier Malik said Pesco completed numerous development projects in 2002-03 to bring improvement in the existing distribution system in the province.

However, he laid great stress on controlling the menace of power theft for bringing any improvement in the distribution system.

To a question, he said Pesco had a total of Rs220 million arrears outstanding against the NWFP government and expressed the hope that it would be cleared in a short span of time.

The Pesco chief argued that the present distribution system was designed for a particular load, therefore, obtaining power connections directly from the LT lines through illegal means would ultimately choke the system. No electric system in the world could bear the burden of power theft, he added.

He said a number of new grid stations established by Pesco in the recent past got choked within six months after commissioning due to over-loading. The only remedy available to overcome the problem of power theft was to curtail power tariff, he agreed when asked.

“In settled areas we have to shut down grid stations during peak hours in order to save the system from collapse,” he added.

“Since it is a very old system it has to be phased out gradually,” he said, adding, “resources are limited while the task is gigantic.”

When asked as to how much amount was required to fully upgrade the power distribution system, Brigadier Malik said spending of one billion rupees amounted to one per cent improvement. Colossal funding required for full improvement of the distribution system, he added.

About the development schemes, he said Rs240 million were spent on the construction of 39 feeders, of which work on 24 feeders had been completed, while work on 15 projects would be completed by June or July 2003. An amount of Rs150 million had been spent on projects relating to LT transformers.

To a question, he said Pesco had 618 feeders of which improvement work was done only on 39 feeders during the outgoing fiscal which came to two or three per cent.

To a question, he said: “We have planned to curtail line losses by one per cent every year.” During the last four years, line losses of Pesco had been reduced by 2.5 per cent to 3.5 per cent.

Line losses before four years were 50 per cent against 142 feeders which had now been reduced to 62 feeders.

He said for the last six months when he took over as Pesco chief executive, line losses were on constant decline while its recovery pace was on the gradual rise.

In 1998-99, Pesco’s recovery in the NWFP was around Rs4.3 billion which jumped to 10.3 per cent in 1999-2000 as a result of which fiscal position of Pesco improved by Rs6 billion a year.

Moreover, he said, a system of merit and transparency was introduced in Wapda and claimed that all the decisions were made on merit during the last four years. All the promotions, recruitment etc were made on merit during the last four years.

The Pesco chief executive said nobody could point a single irregularity in the procurements made for the power company since the induction of the army into Wapda and added all the procurements were made at the rates existing four years ago.

To a question, Brigadier Malik denied the notion that the army was still working in Pesco, and said only three army officers are in fact present in Pesco at the moment which included himself, a colonel, looking after administrative affairs and a major from the Intelligence Wing.

When asked whether the army succeeded in its task for which it was inducted into Wapda, Brigadier Malik listed a long list of achievements made by the army after it took over Wapda some four years ago.

Wapda was at the verge of collapse four years ago while today it is a profitable institution and was paying all its liabilities at its own.

He said the federal government had allocated Rs36 billion as subsidy for Wapda in the budget 2003-04 but the Wapda chairman said the power utility did not need subsidy, we could run Wapda if all its arrears outstanding against the Centre and provincial governments were paid. —APP