ISLAMABAD, Aug 20: The Islamabad Electric Supply Company (Iesco) has been sending inflated bills to the residents, even to those belonging to poor sections of the society, disturbing their monthly budgets, people have complained.

Some of the poor families, mostly Afghan refugees, living in single-room accommodations receive bills equal to or even more than their total monthly income. These people usually live on the meagre daily wages they get from menial jobs. Their daily income is hardly Rs100. They light a single bulb or two, use one fan and have no fridge/water cooler, iron or even television. But their bills are also, sometimes, in the range of Rs1,500 to Rs3,000 per month.

One just wonders what the Water and Power Development Authority is doing: whether it checks meters and charge consumers accordingly or sends bills blindly. To make it worse, once billed, a consumer can lodge dozens of complaints with Wapda officials or the so-called complaint cell, but he/she won’t have any concession, the consumers said.

People have also complained that most of the time their electricity meters remain dysfunctional, and hence show wrong reading but, despite repeated reminders, these are never replaced, and they keep on getting ‘wrong’ bills.

And this is not only the problem with the low-income groups, even the middle class is overcharged beyond their capacity. Most of the middle class families have complained they had been receiving huge bills. A small family of two or three members living in a modicum house of two or three rooms receives bills of about Rs5,000 to Rs6,000.