SUKKUR, July 25: The Sindh Governor, Mohammedmian Soomro, has issued orders to all provincial departments to clear their outstanding power arrears to Hesco, amounting to Rs400 million.

The budget allocation has already been made to all the departments, and it was expected that all the arrears would be paid within a fortnight.

This was revealed by Hesco chief executive Brig Tariq Arshad while speaking at a press conference here on Thursday.

The amount has been in default for the past 10 years, and now recovery magistrates have been assigned to arrest the defaulters for recovery under the Land Revenue Act.

He said that drastic action was also initiated against power thieves and now PVC pipes and insulators would be used to preempt power theft under the Kunda system.

He cited various examples of power theft in the province, including that of Old Sukkur where it was 60 per cent and in Lakhi Ghulam Shah, Shikarpur district, where losses crossed 70 per cent.

On average, the power theft was between 35 to 40 per cent in this region, and he has asked officials to curtail the line losses and keep vigilant in regard to thefts.

As for dealing with corrupt officials of Hesco, he said that three executive engineers, 13 sub-divisional officers and 599 other subordinate staff members had been dismissed from service.

He dispelled the impression that the new PC (transparent) meters were faster in their speed against the previous black meters, and termed that this was false propaganda being spread by vested interests.

He said that these meters had been generally accepted in Punjab where they were first introduced, and now are installed in place of black meters throughout Sindh.

He said to remedy the complaints of low voltage at Shikarpur, Larkana, Shahdadkot, Mirpurkhas and Sanghar, 132KV lines were being laid, and two new grid stations would be set up and would start working within the next 2 months.