LAHORE: Keeping in view the growing public complaints, the Lahore Electric Supply Company’s (Lesco) Board of Directors (BoD) has decided to have a “consumer satisfaction” survey conducted by a third party.

The survey will cover all service areas -- Lahore metropolitan city and the districts of Okara, Kasur, Nankana Sahib and Sheikhupura.

“The public complaints related to Lesco have been on the rise for the last couple of years. This has resulted in annoyance of the consumers as well as a lack of trust by the senior officials on their subordinates supposed to deal with the public at large,” an official source in the company told Dawn on Friday.

“The major complaints include over-billing through advance reading, issuance of inflated detection bills (the bills issued in case of power theft, defective meters etc), non-attendance of landline phone numbers installed at field formations (sub-divisional offices / offices of SDOs), delayed provision of new connections, replacement of defective meters, rectification of the technical faults etc,” the official said.

Lesco is the biggest power distribution company in terms of the number of consumers and consumption of electricity. In summers, the company’s peak demand continues to increase and last year’s peak demand touched 5,000MW. In winters, the demand ranges between 2,500 and 3,500MW. The company is also said to be the biggest power purchaser of the Central Power Purchasing Agency Company-General (CPPA-G). However, due to various administrative and technical issues, the public complaints have risen to a considerable level.

The official said that during the BoD meeting, the participants were of the view that the company’s performance in terms of the disposal of complaints and satisfaction of the consumers must be checked through a survey by a third party consultant or a firm.

“This decision shows that the BoD might have expressed distrust over the statistics related to public complaints and disposal provided by the company management.”

The official said the BoD, in a bid to improve the services, also decided to allow the company to hire services of a third party consultant to provide manpower / staff to various departments such as accounts and information technology. “Actually, the company’s total strength is 20,000 employees and there is a shortage of over 2,000 employees due to retirement,” he said, adding that the decision to have manpower through third party on an urgent basis seemed to have been taken due to slow hiring procedure of the company.

Meanwhile, Lesco Chief Executive Officer Chaudhry Muhammad Amin said in a press release the Lesco BoD in its 242nd meeting approved hiring of the consultants for the provision of manpower for the IT, accounts and other departments of the company and a consumers’ satisfaction survey through third party. “This survey will enable the company to deal with public complaints effectively by resolving their complaints in time.”

Published in Dawn, February 26th, 2022