PESHAWAR: A Peshawar High Court bench on Monday stopped the Peshawar Electricity Supply Company (Pesco) from receiving electricity bills from around a dozen of leading textile mills in the province at ‘inflated’ rates and directed it to issue the revised bills for the month of July with reduced rates in accordance with a notification issued early this year.

Justice Ijaz Anwar Khan and Justice Waqar Ahmad directed the Pesco that the revised bills for July should have reduced rate up to 7.5 cent/Kwh (kilowatt hour) as per the notification issued on Jan 1, 2019 by the energy ministry.

The bench also directed the Pesco through its chief executive officer and Pesco’s revenue officer to file comments on a petition jointly filed by Sarhad Textile Mills and 10 other textile mills claiming that contrary to an SRO issued through a notification for introducing reduced rates of electricity for exporters-cum-manufacturers, the Pesco had issued July bills at increased rates.

The petitioners requested the court to declare that notification No SRO 12(1)/2019 dated Jan 1, 2019, issued by the energy ministry (power division), whereby the exporters-cum-manufacturers were given the benefit of reduction of electricity tariff at the rate of 7.5 cents/kWh, was binding upon the respondents including Pesco with an immediate effect and they were under a legal obligation to issue bills and supply the electricity to the petitioners at the newly decided rates.

PHC orders issuance of revised July bills

They requested the court to declare that under the scheme of the Constitution and the relevant laws of the land the respondents, subordinate authorities/officials are bound to give effect to such order/notification as passed by the federal government and that no further amount under any head resulting into enhancement of tariff could be included in the electricity bills.

A panel of lawyers including Qazi Ghulam Dastagir, Nazish Muzaffar Awan and Malik Nasir Abbas appeared for the petitioners and said their clients were exporters-cum-manufacturers of different textile products for which purposes they had established their industrial manufacturing units in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

They said during the last few years, due to huge mismanagement in the energy sector such as electricity and gas sector, their clients had to face constant and arbitrary increases in the tariffs which being the primary raw material into the manufacturing process almost costs around fifty percent of the total manufacturing costs.

The lawyers added that in spite of having the status of GSP Plus country, which granted Pakistan a comparative lesser customs tariffs for the importing countries vis-à-vis the competing textiles exporting countries to the destination countries under the WTO regime, Pakistan had been facing decline in the textile exports.

They said the present government introduced the scheme of the reduced rates of electricity and gas for the exporter cum manufacturers and through this the rates of gas for said sector was fixed @ $6.50 per MMBTU and for electricity those were to be 7.5 cents/kWh.

The lawyers said for purpose of electricity, a statutory notification SRO No.12 (I)/2019 was duly promulgated on Jan 1, 2019.

Ghulam Dastagir said that system of the payment of electricity bills continued without interruption until June 2019 but when the petitioners received bills for the electricity consumed in July 2019, the Pesco instead of billing them at the reduced rate of 7.5 cents/KWh illegally billed them at higher and inflated rates while including therein certain quarterly adjustments, which were not at all applicable to the petitioners in the presence of the beneficial notification.

He said when the petitioners approached the relevant officials seeking downward correction of their bills, they flatly refused the downward corrections of bills.

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2019