PESHAWAR: With the rise in mercury power outages have started teasing the consumers in the provincial metropolis despite serious efforts by the Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) to overcome this core issue, while in rural areas the situation is going from bad to worse.

The Pesco is using the terms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ for those paying bills regularly and the defaulters, respectively, but in practice the power company is yet to materialise its slogan of ‘more stealing more loadshedding, lesser stealing less loadshedding’.

At present, Pesco’s mantra of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ consumers is proving wrong because the regular payers of monthly bills have also been facing the prolonged, unscheduled loadshedding meant for the chronic defaulters and power thieves.

According to insiders, Pesco officials are unable to meet the target of controlling line losses set by the federal government and the only option left with them is to mix the good consumers with bad ones by linking their localities with different feeders to show that the recovery is improving.

Everyone in Pesco knows that the people who steal power avoid payment, misbehave and even threaten the relevant raiding parties during operations against illegal connections, but no effective steps against them have so far been taken which could help provide relief to the ‘good’ consumers.

“Had the relevant staff members not been hand in glove with power thieves, the line losses will have never increased,” an official said.

Power consumers belonging to various localities have started taking out rallies and holding protest demonstrations against prolonged outages. “Most of the protest rallies are taken out by the people who are regularly paying bills because they are pouring their money into drains with a little return,” one Rahmatullah Khan of Yakatoot said. He said that the people in urban areas were paying the bills, but they were also punished for the crime committed by others.

“I am fed up with the prolonged loadshedding to the extent that I want to shift somewhere else,” said a retired military man known as ‘Fauji Mama’ at Shaheen Colony. He said that most of the residents of his locality were employees of various government and private organisations and paying bills regularly, but even then they were subjected to power outages.

Complainants from parts of Peshawar, including City Railways Station, Shahi Bagh, Atta Mohammad Garhi and Bara Gate, said that they had time and again produced their paid bills to the relevant officials to solve the problem, but to no avail. Most of the consumers complained that besides facing scorching hot weather they were regularly facing shortage of water in their localities and also pointed out that their children were unable to prepare for the examinations.

During an interaction a number of politicians and businessmen shared their views about power suspensions with this correspondent, with some suggesting deployment of Rangers and others asking for handing over the Pesco’s charge to the provincial government.

Talking to this correspondent, Awami National Party general secretary Mian Iftikhar Hussain suggested that the provincial and federal governments should decide a reasonable price of Pesco and hand it over to the province. “There is no doubt that the provincial government is incapable to construct a single dam, but on the other hand the federal government has also failed to give due rights to the province,” he said.

Mr Hussain said that despite earning a huge amount of money Wapda was least interested to replace its faulty transmission lines. He said that consumers also had to pay for the repair of transformers even in urban localities.

Jamaat-i-Islami provincial chief Mushtaq Ahmed Khan condemned the practice of prolonged loadshedding and said it had badly affected normal life.

He said that the federal government was intentionally doing injustice with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He said that observing 20 hours loadshedding was unbearable. He called for planning to take over Pesco which, he added, was the only solution to produce own electricity and replace the entire outdated transmission lines.

PML-N provincial secretary information Nasir Khan Musazai suggested seeking Rangers help in controlling power theft, line losses and recovery of dues otherwise the situation would worsen.

“The main issue is not the shortage of electricity. The Wapda employees unions have crippled the entire system by not allowing reforms,” he said, adding that no one could transfer the employees from seats of their choice. He said that the employees were involved in corruption and as a result ‘good consumers’ paying their bills regularly had to face the loadshedding.

Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl provincial secretary information Maulana Abdul Jalil Jan held both the federal and provincial governments responsible for the current situation and suggested construction of new dams and rectification of the existing power supply system.

“In my view, the provincial government should convene an all-party conference on this issue instead of taking any emotional step,” he said.

Pakistan Peoples Party former provincial secretary information Liaquat Shabab said that after the 18th constitutional amendment the provincial government had the mandate to construct own dams, exploit the power potential and take effective steps for securing its due rights. He also recalled that PTI chief Imran Khan had announced to construct 350 dams, but his party’s government had failed to do so. He said that work on new power generation projects should be started on priority bases to end the crisis.

Pesco spokesman Shaukat Afzal, however, said that efforts were made to facilitate the ‘good consumers’ but they were connected with the same supply lines (as the bad ones) and could not be detached.

The Pesco management, he said, was trying to provide possible relief in loadshedding to its consumers. Implementing the policy of “more stealing more loadshedding, lesser stealing less loadshedding” the Pesco is carrying out lesser loadshedding where line losses are less and recovery position is better, he said.

Mr Afzal said that in the areas where line losses were over 80 per cent and electricity bills were not paid there would be more loadshedding. “The people belonging to high loss feeders are making hue and cry and protesting against the loadshedding. Pesco is a commercial entity and it could not provide electricity free of cost,” he said.

He said that the Ministry of Water and Power had asked all the distribution companies to display line losses, recoveries and the quantum of loadshedding of every feeder at different places so that people should know about the losses due to power stealing.

Published in Dawn, May 16th, 2016