KARACHI, Jan 16: The Karachi Electric Supply Corporation has failed to realize the revenue targets set against supplementary bills.

Well-placed sources told Dawn that the 257-men army monitoring teams had been tasked to improve revenue collection and check power theft. They added that both assignments remained largely unaccomplished.

They said between Sept 2000 and Nov 2001 the KESC had issued supplementary bills to the tune of Rs966.7 million. The amount recovered had been only Rs372.7m.

Analysts contend that while the army monitoring teams had done the easy job of issuing supplementary bills, they had failed to perform the difficult task of recovering the outstanding dues.

“Recovery has not been the strong point of KESC officials who do not have the influence required to get the defaulters to pay up. It is a pity that even the army monitoring teams — which have all imaginable resources at their disposal — recovered only 39 per cent of the amount receivable under the head of supplementary bills,” they point out.

Even the KESC auditors, Sidat Hyder Qamar & Co, find recovery against supplementary billing unsatisfactory. In a separate report, the chartered accountants note: “During the course of our scrutiny at the Industrial Billing Zone, Civic Centre, we were informed that supplementary bills were made in case of several consumers after detailed verification of their electricity consumption. However, we could not observe proper recovery against such billings since long and in various cases such period has extended to over one year. May we draw your attention that merely the issuance of supplementary bills to consumers is not the solution for improving the financial health of the KESC, but to make a proper followup for recovery from such consumers.”

Well-informed sources told Dawn that the second assignment given to the army monitoring teams had been the elimination of power theft. They added that at present there were 3,500,000 kundas (illegal power connections) in the city.

“Because of 3,500,000 illegal power connections, the KESC suffers a loss of Rs113m every month,” they explained.

KESC officials told Dawn that during the ongoing disconnection campaign, launched by the power utility recently, personnel of police and rangers accompanied the army monitoring teams. “If personnel of law-enforcement agencies accompanied us, we could also perform the job being done by the army monitoring teams,” the KESC officials claimed.

The previous management of the KESC, headed by former managing director Brig Syed Shahid Mukhtar Shah, had decided to send the army monitoring teams back to the barracks. Speaking to reporters at the Bin Qasim power plant on May 17, the former KESC managing director had announced that “the army monitoring teams will leave the KESC by the end of December 2001.” The present management, however, cancelled the decision taken by the former KESC chief.

drive: The joint KESC teams of army, rangers and police disconnected power supply of 900 more commercial and domestic defaulting consumers on Wednesday — the third day of its drive for recovery of outstanding electric dues amounting to Rs 20 billion.