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LAHORE, Jan 23: The Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) has introduced payment of electricity bills in union council offices on a trial basis in Rawalpindi.
The decision was prompted by a recent meeting of the federal minister for information and media development, Shaikh Rashid Ahmad, with Wapda chairman Zulfiqar Ali Khan. The minister had requested that the authority should start collecting payments and save customers the ordeal of standing in long queues outside banks and post-offices.
Wapda officials are of the view that if the project succeeds, the authority may introduce it in other cities. However, it would remain limited to big cities because of the problem of cash transactions in smaller cities.
However, the initiative is not without its critics. Some of the officials think that the experiment would soon fail because of the security risk involved in cash collection.
The law and order in the country hardly permits such an experiment and it would take only one mishap to undo it. The authority had forced it through against the advice of finance department in order to satisfy an important politician, they maintained.
Meanwhile, presiding over a monthly review meeting, the chairman asked chief executive officers of all the distribution companies to improve services in their areas.
The authority was informed that 4.511 billion electricity units were generated during the month of December, 135 million more than the corresponding month of 2001. Electricity bills worth Rs15.6 billion were issued, Rs2.5 billion (or 19.1 per cent) more than the corresponding month of last year. As much as Rs14.7 billion were received against the billing. The same amount was recovered in Dec 2001.
During Dec 2002, as many as 39,453 new connections were provided, including 34,442 domestic, 3,336 commercial, 459 industrial and 193 for tubewells. Wapda now has 12.98 million consumers.
With the addition of 200km of 11KV high-tension wires and 213km of low-tension ones, the total length of distribution lines rose to 325,199km.
