PESHAWAR, Jan 9: A recent move of the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) to disconnect electricity connections of the defaulting departments and institutions of the federal and provincial governments in the NWFP has helped the authority in improving its revenue collections, official sources told Dawn here on Wednesday.

The move, the sources said, helped the authority to record recoveries of up to 74 per cent of the total cost of electricity consumed by the federal and provincial government departments in the NWFP in October last year, as compared to the 28.6 per cent amount recovered in July the same year.

Peshawar Electricity Supply Company (Pesco), a subsidiary of Wapda, launched a campaign for disconnecting electricity connections of the defaulting departments and semi-autonomous bodies of the federal and provincial government departments in the NWFP in July last year.

The move was meant to recover multi-billion-rupee arrears payable by the federal and provincial government departments and to make them pay their power charges on regular basis in future.

The strategy, the sources said, yielded encouraging results as far as tariff collection from the public sector departments and institutions is concerned.

According to official sources, collection of power charges from the federal and provincial government departments in the NWFP out of the total cost of electricity sold to them rose from 28.6 per cent in August 2001 to 48 per cent in September and 74.2 per cent in October the same year.

Though the measure helped the authority to improve its monthly recovery of electricity charges from the public sector departments and institutions, Wapda was still finding it difficult to recover the multi-billion-rupee arrears standing since years against the departments of the provincial and federal governments, the sources said.

Only in the NWFP, the authority has a claim of over Rs3bn against the federal and provincial government departments.

The provincial government and Wapda are having a running dispute over the arrears issue since long. However, at a recent meeting President Gen Pervez Musharraf directed the provincial governments, including that of the NWFP, to clear their dues payable to Wapda.

The chief executive of Pesco, Brig Khalid Khan, talking to this scribe recently appeared optimistic about further improvement of the revenue collection and recovery of old arrears in the case of public sector departments and organizations.

He said Wapda and the NWFP authorities were determined to resolve the arrears issue.

Apart from Rs3bn arrears payable to Wapda by public sector departments and entities of the federal and provincial governments, the authority owes to recover another collective amount of Rs3bn in the NWFP from the private consumers, including domestic and industrial connections.

Sources said except for a couple of dry areas from where Wapda is suffering revenue losses in the NWFP, the authority’s tariff collection from private consumers appeared to be satisfactory.

Out of the total cost of electricity sold to private consumers in the NWFP, the authority recovered 95.6 per cent charges in July 2001, 95.3 per cent in August, 92.2 per cent in September and 107 per cent in October, inclusive of some of the amount from the arrears account.

“Given the fact that losses are reduced, power distribution system could be improved,” said another senior Pesco official.

There were certain areas, in the outskirts of Peshawar, where Wapda’s billing staff could not dare to enter for meter reading purposes and even the provincial police department was unable to help the authority recover its dues from the defaulting consumers.

However, the sources said, except for a couple of these areas, including Landi Arbab and Sheikh Mohammedi, on the average, Wapda collects over 95 per cent of the total cost of electricity consumed by private — domestic and commercial — consumers.