KOHAT: People of six different localities of Kohat district on Thursday announced at a jirga that they would not pay electricity bills due to prolonged outages in their areas.

Shakir Bangash, who presided over the jirga session, said that the consumers of Kamardhand, Teen Talab, Boraka, Sor Gul, Chambai, and Bamma took a unanimous decision to boycott payment of bills and ask Pesco to remove electricity poles from their fields within one month.

They said that despite long hours of power shutdowns huge bills were being sent to them carrying half a dozen taxes.

Moreover, the jirga said the Pesco staff would not be allowed to take meter readings and threatened to boycott anti-polio campaigns as the next step.

The jirga members said that nobody would be allowed to take away the meters, which were the property of consumers under the law. They regretted that they had been blocking roads and staging sit-ins, but Pesco was not mending its ways.

Published in Dawn, December 27th, 2024