LANDI KOTAL, Sept 17: The shortage of funds is hampering construction of a much awaited grid station in Jamrud tehsil of Khyber Agency, according to sources.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Barrister Masud Kausar had performed the ground breaking ceremony of the grid station on June 4 last year over a 32-kanal piece of land, provided by Sher Khan Khel tribe of Jamrud.

An amount of about Rs400 million was pledged for the grid station after completion of its PC-1 out of which 20 per cent was allocated to Tribal Areas Electricity Company (Tesco) in the first few months.

“The total cost has now been revised owing to increase in the machinery including heavy transformers, additional transmission lines and electricity pools,” said Mohammad Anwar, Tesco spokesman. He added that they required Rs850 million according to the revised PC-1.

Mr Anwar said that initially it was planned to provide connection to the new grid station from Hayatabad, which was near Jamrud but now the connection would be provided from Sheikh Mohammadi grid station that was far away and it would require additional pools and longer transmission line.

He, however, said that efforts were underway for release of the required funds. Procurement of heavy machinery and its installation would be started as soon as the funds were released, he added.

“We are quite optimistic that the grid station will be made operational within a year once the funds are released,” Mr Anwar said.

MNA Noorul Haq Qadri also acknowledged that delay in the grid station was owing to shortage of funds. He said that he too was trying to get released the rest of the funds for an early construction of the grid station.

The residents of Jamrud, however, alleged that more than fifty ice and steel factories along with some marble crushing machines were illegally operating in Shahkas area without legal electricity connections.

“The owners of these factories pay huge amount of money to both Tesco and officials of political administration for stealing electricity,” Ikramullah Jan Kukikhel, a local elder, alleged.

Tesco spokesman brushed aside the allegations and said that they had only recently disconnected illegal power supply of a number of ice factories and would not allow anyone to steal electricity.