SHANGLA: The elders of Puran tehsil of Shangla have demanded of the Peshawar Electric Supply Company officials to remove the double connections provided to the influential people.

Addressing a press conference here the other day, members of a local welfare committee threatened to start street protests if the ‘illegal’ connections were not removed.

The elders, including Javid Ali, Rehmanullah, Najamullah, Bakht Baidar, Amir Ayaz Khan and others, said some influential people, particularly political leaders and government officers, had been supplied electricity from two different feeders.

Javed Ali said if there was an outage on one feeder these people used electricity from the other. He said while such personalities had uninterrupted power supply, common consumers faced prolonged outages.

Threaten street protests if Pesco does not meet their demand

Elder Rehmanullah claimed Pesco subdivision staff and local PML-N and PTI leaders were having electricity supply from two feeders. He said these connections often overloaded the feeders, leading to suspension of electricity supply for hours.

Elder Najamullah said Pesco consumers received the same bills irrespective of how much power they consumed due to shortage of Pesco staff to conduct meter reading.

The elders set a week’s deadline for Pesco to remove the ‘illegal’ connections, or they would come onto the roads.

Pesco sub-divisional officer, Puran, Mohammad Junaid told Dawn on contact that many influential people had taken double connections. He urged the political leaders to remove double connections on their own, or face crackdown.

POWER ARREARS PAID: The Pesco’s Shangla office has received two instalments of R100 million each from Water and Power Development Authority in arrears of power consumers of Kohistan as the authority implemented an agreement inked with the residents in 2022 following protests to provide them electricity at subsidised rates as a mega hydropower project was being built in their region.

Sources in Pesco confirmed receiving two cheques from Wapda the other day as dues to be paid by the consumers in Upper and Lower Kohistan and Kolai Pallas districts.

The consumers in these districts had staged rallies and protests demanding free electricity as the 4,500-megawatt Dasu hydropower project was being built in Upper Kohistan.

Zakria Zahid, Pesco executive engineer, Shangla, told Dawn that his office had received two instalments covering bills of over 1,700 consumers till December 2022.

He said they were compiling a list of the consumers for payment of the last and third instalmentthat would probably be worth Rs70 million. He said the Kohistan consumers would start paying their bills from January 2023 onwards.

Hafeez ur Rehman, a social activist, who actively participated in the rallies for the rights of Kohistan people, said payment of power dues was only the one demand Wapda had met so far. He said there were over a dozen demands the authority had promised to meet when it inked an agreement with the elders of Kohistan in the presence of former PM’s adviser Amir Muqam.

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2023