LANDI KOTAL: The Tribal Electric Supply Company has started installation of power meters at the residential quarters of doctors and paramedics and doctors’ hostel located in the agency headquarters hospital, Landi Kotal.

Tesco officials said that installation of power meters at the residential quarters was started after conclusion of successful negotiations with the hospital administration. They said that installation of meters would be completed in three phases.

They said that doctors were initially reluctant to allow the grid station staff to install meters at their houses where they also run their private clinics and had not been paying power bills to the company for over three decades.

At least eight meters were installed on the first day on Saturday, the officials said. Doctors at the AHQ hospital went on a complete strike last week after Tesco officials subjected the hospital premises and the living quarters to almost 15-hour loadshedding.

Doctors at AHQ hospitals had earlier resisted the move

Tesco contended that the hospital owed Rs70 million in arrears to the company and were thus left with no other option, but to curtail power supply to compel the hospital management to pay the outstanding bills and allow installation of meters.

Doctors at the hospital had argued during their protest that the Fata Secretariat had been paying Rs600,000 as monthly bill to Tesco regularly. However, the Tesco officials insisted that they got the power bill only against the health and administrative units of the hospital and not for the living quarters.

Sources in the hospital told this correspondent that doctors living in the official residences and at the hostel deposited with the hospital management a nominal monthly bill of Rs1,500 and Rs1,000, respectively.

They said that almost all the doctors and paramedics had fitted air-conditioners, room heaters and electric ovens installed at their residences, but were resisting installation of electricity meters.

The four-days strike had ended only when the Tesco agreed to curtail loadshedding to five hours a day while the hospital management expressed readiness for installation of meters.

The officials said that a formula had also been sorted out with both the hospital management and officials of Fata Secretariat for the recovery of arrears in the coming months.

RELEASED: Members of Fata Tribunal ordered the release of at least 12 prisoners held for petty crimes during their visit of the Landi Kotal prison on Saturday, officials said.

The members heard their cases during an open court on the prison premises and later ordered immediate release of 12 prisoners.

Published in Dawn, July 30th, 2017