ISLAMABAD, Nov 1: Nearly half of the electricity produced in the country ultimately goes down the drain because of system losses and non-recovery of bills, according to a government testimony before the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Water and Power.

The testimony gave reason even to PPP parliamentarians attending a committee meeting on Thursday to express no-confidence in the ability of Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf to resolve the power crisis.

The committee led by Syed Ghulam Mustafa Shah was dumbfounded when Water and Power Special Secretary Himayatullah Khan testified that the power sector losses stood at about 45 per cent.

The committee was also informed that about 12,000 connections, out of the 28,000 public sector connections of Sindh government, did not even have meters and the provincial government owed Rs50 billion to the Hyderabad Electric Supply Company.

Ejaz Virk, the PPP member whose Faisalabad residence was attacked not long ago by a mob protesting against loadshedding, was particularly harsh in his criticism of the government.

He said that loadshedding was a stigma for the PPP government but the party’s leadership hardly realised what kind of problems the power outages and shortfall were creating for its legislators.

“Raja Pervez Ashraf is the prime minister today. What else does he want us to do? We cannot make him a prophet. He remained power minister and knows everything about the crisis. But their activities suggest they are ‘Disco Diwane’,” Mr Virk remarked. When confirmed by the special secretary that the government had injected Rs1.4 trillion into the power sector over the past four years, Mr Virk lamented that the situation had not changed during the period and the parliamentarians were raising the same questions that they were four years ago.

“This is a huge amount. Even the Arabian Sea could have started providing electricity with this kind of money.”

Giving details of the losses, Special Secretary Khan attributed 3 per cent each to transmission and generation, 10 per cent to distribution, 15 per cent to theft and 14 per cent to non-recovery of bills.

He also conceded that a large number of consumers were using ‘kundas’ in connivance with the staff of utilities to steal electricity.

While the losses were a cause of concern for the parliamentarians, equally disturbing was the revelation that the ministry of water and power had put a ban on allowing poor consumers to pay their bills in instalments or after the due date even in hardship cases while industrialists continued to use electricity after defaulting on payments.

The committee unanimously asked the government to withdraw the ban and provide relief to the poor people who wanted to pay their bills in instalments. Mr Khan confirmed that the ban had created a lot of problems for the people and the ministry was already considering reviewing it.

A general manager of the Hyderabad Electric Supply Company confirmed that system losses in his utility hovered around 45 per cent and added that theft was one of the key factors in this regard. He said the Sindh government had defaulted in payment of Rs50 billion to Hesco and the stock had been built up mostly in the past four years.

After a lot of debate, the provincial government had recently made a nominal payment, of Rs800 million, he said.

He said that out of 28,000 public sector connections, the Sindh government was acknowledging only 16,000 connections and disputing the remaining 12,000. He said an independent consultant had recently been hired to verify and reconcile these connections.

He explained that most of the public sector connections did not have meters and the bills were issued on the basis of sanctioned load. But now the provincial government was also disputing the load factor.

The special secretary informed the committee that overall cost of generation stood at about Rs12 per unit against its sale price of Rs8.88 per unit, leaving a gap of about Rs3 per unit. “This is why the circular debt refuses to go away,” he said.