HYDERABAD, May 8: The chief executive officer of Hesco, Mr Maqbool Ahmed Khwaja, on Monday said that power consumers who had defaulted on payment for five or more years could get their connections restored by paying 50 per cent of their outstanding dues.

He said that the defaulters would be exempted from remaining 50 per cent dues.

He urged the consumers to take advantage of this incentive to avoid recovery of the entire amount under the land revenue act.

At a meeting of company officials, he also announced that consumers could also get new connections on payment of only Rs250 whereas the remaining amount would be recovered in easy instalments of Rs50 per month.

The Hesco chief took a serious notice of erratic power supply and warned officials against power outages.

He said that if any officer was found involved in suspension of power supply without cogent reasons, strict action would be taken against him.

The Hesco chief said that the main culprits for the erratic power supply were power thieves and other people who were using electricity beyond the sanctioned load.

He pointed out that during the summer season, the entire system was under tremendous pressure and added that due to kunda system and use of power beyond sanctioned load severe damage was caused to transformers.

He said that a majority of law-abiding citizens was suffering due to a handful of law-breakers.

He directed Hesco officials not to spare any person who was involved in power theft.

He also appealed to consumers to get their power load registered with sub-division concerned.

The chief executive said that Wapda and Hesco were in deep financial crisis due to non-payment of outstanding dues by consumers.

He said that an amount of Rs8.52 billion was outstanding against 488,300 consumers.

He said that the power supply to 274,539 had been stopped on the permanent basis who owed Wapda a huge amount of Rs3.67 billion.