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NAROWAL, Feb 7: A number of consumers have complained of excessive billing by Gepco, unannounced power suspensions, low voltage and misbehaviour of the staff with the complainants.
They alleged that the Narowal XEN has advised his staff to include extra units in the bills to cover line losses caused due to power theft committed by the influentials with the connivance of Gepco staff.
They alleged that the XEN and other Gepco staff misbehaved with the consumers who approached their offices for the correction of bills.
A complainant, on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday he was charged 250 excessive units in his bill without any justification. He claimed that the Gepco staff was reluctant to correct the bill.
He told he approached the XEN but he (the XEN) misbehaved with him and asked him to leave his office.
Karamat Ali, a resident of Abbas Nagar, said the residents were experiencing low voltage since long and no step has been taken despite several complaints.
He said Gepco has supplied power to a mobile phone company from the domestic transformer without installing separate transformer which has caused a substantial drop in voltage.
They urged the high ups to take notice of the situation and take action against the XEN and the staff.
RECOVERY: Gepco claimed on Wednesday to have recovered a record Rs14.35 billion revenue during the first half of current fiscal year, besides reducing 0.1 per cent line losses.
This was stated by Gepco chief executive Rana Muhammad Ashref Zahid while speaking at a meeting at the company headquarters held to review its performance.
He said work on upgradation of power-supply network was being completed swiftly to ensure continuous provision of electricity to the consumers during the summer season.
He said 714 small projects pertaining to light and high transmission had been completed, besides installing of 423 new transformers at a cost of Rs160 million to revamp the system, increasing its capacity by 41MVA.
He said Rs3.3 billion would be spent on the completion of upgradition work till the end of current fiscal year.
He said 165 villages were electrified, besides provision of 46,940 new connections to consumers taking the number to two million.
He said about 33 cases of electricity theft were also got registered while detection bills of Rs38.26 million were recovered.
Over 56,000 complaints were addressed and 61,000 defective meters changed, he added.
Besides, 47 Gepco employees, including six officers in grade 17 were terminated from service over serious charges while several others were penalised for inefficiency in 684 cases.
