ISLAMABAD, July 31: The government has decided to replace in a phased manner incumbent members of the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) with fresh professionals without affecting provincial representation.

A senior government official told Dawn that Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz had recently asked relevant authorities to appoint finance, technical, economics and law experts as members of Nepra in place of retired bureaucrats.

The decision, sources said, emanated from the inflexible attitude of Nepra members towards the needs of power utilities, particularly their strong position to restrict utilities from recovering more than 15 per cent system losses from consumers.

The government did not implement two biannual determinations of Nepra to allow windfall benefit of higher tariffs to distribution companies.

The official said since the existing Nepra members, mostly retired bureaucrats, had contract tenures, the government could not replace them without paying them full contract salaries.

Hence, it has been decided not to hire retired bureaucrats in future. As a first step, a private sector expert of finance, economics or law having Sindh domicile would be appointed on completion of tenure of Sindh member Fazlullah Qureshi.

Similarly, the members from Balochistan and the NWFP would be brought in from the private sector on completion of contract terms of existing members Nasiruddin Ahmad and Abdul Rahim.