KOHAT, May 9: Cases were registered by police against 21 people — including owners of two shopping centres — for stealing electricity or for defaulting on payments to be made to the Peshawar Electric Supply Company.

Cases were registered against Baseer Khan, owner of the Al-Madina Market, and Rab Nawaz, owner of the Al-Madni Market, in the Behzadi Chakarkot area.

In the Al-Madina Market, 54 shopkeepers and in Al-Madni Market 21 shopkeepers were found stealing electricity through kundas for air conditioning.

During a raid on the house of a former police officer, Rashid Gul, the power meter was found tampered with. It was also discovered that he had defaulted on payments worth Rs70,199.

The Pesco got 11 cases registered against consumers who had failed to clear dues of Rs200,000 each. It also registered cases against 10 other people for using kundas to steal electricity.

Yousuf Khan, the SDO of Pesco for Urban II in Kohat, told Dawn that officials of his department conducted regular operations against power thieves and got criminal cases registered. But the defaulters were never arrested because of non-cooperation of police.

Mohammad Abid, President of the Tajir Action Committee, expressed his surprise over registration of cases against owners of commercial plazas and said that not a single case had been registered against meter readers without whose help consumers could not steal electricity.

Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Kohat Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Manzoor Ahmed Paracha, has demanded an early start of work on the KDA grid station which was approved in 2005.

He pointed out that there was only one grid station for the city which was built in 1973. The load had multiplied in the the past 29 years.

He said that no new grid station had been set up for cities built during the past two decades. He claimed that two grid stations approved for Kohat, had been built in Bannu on the orders of Chief Minister Mohammad Akram Durrani and another one in Daud Khel.

He termed the absence of a separate grid station and provision of gas to the new industrial estate as main hurdles in attracting investments for the area.

He criticised the Water and Power Development Authority for unannounced and long loadshedding, saying the same had badly affected industrial production and served to widen the gap between supply and demand.

He said the Kohat Development Authority had alloted 50 kanals of land to Wapda for a new 132KVA grid station in Kohat which had raised hopes for a solution to the longstanding problem of low voltage in Darra Adam Khel, Hangu, KDA Township and Kohat City.

However, work on the project had not been started yet due to unknown reasons although the state minister for water and power had been saying that funds had been approved for it.