HARIPUR, April 23: The Pesco authorities caught at least 282 power thieves and imposed a fine totalling up Rs2.239 million during the quarter ending March 31, 2005, said a Pesco spokesman here on Saturday. Briefing the media on quarter-yearly performance of the Pesco’s three sub divisions, the spokesman said that detection teams of Pesco, during the ongoing anti power pilferage drive, caught 282 power thieves and issued them bills for 447817 pilfered units, amounting Rs2.239 million.

During the campaign the Pesco staff, he said, caught, red handed, 109 persons using power supply through Kundas and registered cases against them under section 39-A of the Electricity Act.

According to the spokesman, the TIP sub division was rated ahead of the two other subdivisions with the highest number of detected cases. In this subdivision alone the detection team caught 141 power thieves and issued them bills for 252124 pilfered units. The city subdivision was the second in the list, which recorded about 70 power theft cases during this period.

To a question the spokesman said that number of the cases detected during the last three months indicated that the department had applied very effective tools to get rid of the menace of power pilferage.

He expressed a hope that the spirit with which involvement of the staff was encouraged by the high command, would in near future help improve the performance of the utility.

On a question regarding recovery of dues, the spokesman said that the Urban division was declared number one among all the Pesco divisions of Hazara circle on account of its best recovery position.