ISLAMABAD: The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Tuesday criticised power distribution companies (Discos) for the rising technical losses worth billions of rupees per year.

At a meeting presided over by Syed Khursheed Ahmed Shah, the PAC was briefed by Discos officials about the technical losses. The officials said the Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) was facing 11.8pc technical losses, Fesco (Faisalabad) 10.2pc, Mepco (Multan) 15pc, Pesco (Peshawar) 21pc, Hesco (Hyderabad) 18pc and Sepco 19pc technical losses.

The PAC, which discussed audit paras related to the Ministry of Energy, directed the officials to control the losses.

“We have been providing Rs500 billion annually to Wapda but there is no significant improvement,” the PAC chairman said, terming Wapda a white elephant.

He said the government had been claiming to end loadshedding but on the ground there was no serious improvement.

Earlier, discussing an audit para related to the Nandipur power plant, audit officials told the committee that the plant produced 1,321.65 million units (MT) from July 2015 to July 2016 against its generation capacity of 2,233.80 MT.

“This resulted into less generation of 912.15 million units valuing Rs9,121.50mn. No inquiry was conducted into the matter,” said the audit report.

The plant’s management told the auditors that the powerhouse could not attain its full capacity due to non-installation of two skids.

The report said the management also stated that the main reason behind less generation was that the furnace oil treatment was composed of four skids each with the designed output of 31 million tons. However, each skid was commissioned at 18 million ton/hour instead of 31 million tons per hour.

The auditors also said Rs217.45 million had been paid to M/S Albario Engineer for the provision of manpower for the 425 MW Nandipur plant.

The report said the payment was irregular and unjustified as the surplus staff, consisting of 250 technical personal of Peeran Ghaib thermal power station in Multan could have been transferred to the project. Besides, 25 engineers were provided training in China for the project but their services were yet to be utilised.

The PAC also discussed an audit para “loss due to excess auxiliary consumption of 109 million” in the Nandipur plant. But the meeting decided to take up the para later.

Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2018