LAHORE: Three of the total 13 circles of the Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) have been outsourced to private firms as a pilot project to undertake various tasks.

Under the plan, the firms will be responsible to deal with the matters of electricity meters, electricity cables, old wires replacement and removing major and minor faults.

According to a senior official, the plan was necessary in view of the increasing complaints and incidents on several hot spots identified by the officials. It was also necessary to reduce burden on several area/field offices of the company in Lahore and the adjoining areas and, if implemented well, the areas cleared of the hazards would be declared as model places.

“Under this pilot project, we have outsourced three circles—Circle 1st, 5th and Kasur. The rest of the circles (particularly related to the fieldwork) will also be outsourced, subject to success of the pilot project,” Lesco’s Chief Executive Officer Syed Wajid Ali Kazmi told Dawn on Friday.

“The work in the first circle (northern circle), which comprises of the areas, including Ravi Road, Gulshan-i-Ravi, Data Darbar and Anarkali, has been started. In Anarkali, the firm has started placing meters and their service lines originating from nine transformers, clumping of the cables/wires and doing other jobs as mentioned in the agreement,” he explained.

In 5th circle, consisting of Gulberg, Defence, Raiwind Road, Johar Town and other areas, the work will be launched soon. However, the contractor is yet to start work in Kasur circle. Hopefully, the contractor would also start work there within next 15 days under the agreement, Mr Kazmi added.

Talking about the hot spots, the Lesco chief said there are total 10,000 such points identified by Lesco in a survey. Of these, 1,000 had already been cleared. Besides the contractor, Lesco’s own teams would also clear such hazardous points (not mentioned in the agreement).

The official claimed that within last 90 days, 44 11kV feeders were added to the system, relieving 88 feeders of the additional burden and giving a relief related to voltage, tripping, fluctuation etc to a large number of consumers. Besides this, five more 132kV grid stations were added to system from October 2016 to date, relieving many others of the additional burden.

Published in Dawn, July 15th, 2017