ISLAMABAD, Jan 23 The Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (Hesco) detected 170,365 cases of power pilferage in 2007-2008, federal Minister for Water and Power Raja Pervaiz Ashraf informed the National Assembly on Friday.

In a written reply to a question, he said that all the cases had been detected in Hyderabad district. As a result of legal proceedings, Hesco had recovered Rs357 million from the accused, he said.

Mr Ashraf said the power utility had taken a number of steps to reduce line losses and pilferage, including installation of static meters for general consumers and special meters for tube-wells, replacement of defective meters, appointment of special magistrates for power theft cases and spot checks for curbing pilferage.

The minister said the World Bank had agreed to provide $20 million for installation of aerial bundled conductors and the Asian Development Bank would provide $30 million for the project.

He said that Hesco had requested the Sindh government to appoint three special magistrates because of the extent of pilferage. It had also set up special surveillance teams.

Responding to a supplementary question, the minister said the government would clear the circular debt of Rs400 billion by the end of the current financial year, enabling independent power producers to maximise their production capacity.

He said the issue had been left unresolved by the previous government, which led to the collapse of the entire power production infrastructure.

The water and power ministry was making current payments to avoid recurrence of such difficulties.

The minister reiterated that load-shedding would end by the end of the year when power companies would start producing enough electricity to meet the demand.

Answering another question, Mr Ashraf said the government had prepared a two-phase plan to meet future electricity requirements. In the first phase, a number of projects have been initiated, with 2015 set as their completion date. He said the second phase would be completed in 2030, and future governments would not face any shortage of electricity.

According to him, the domestic demand was increasing by eight to 10 per cent annually. This fact had been ignored by the previous government, he said.

Opposition lawmaker Faiz Ahmad urged the minister to find out why had the sector had been ignored by the previous government and to fix the responsibility.

The minister said that power producers had achieved 20 to 22 per cent increase in productivity through repair and refitting, and the country was saving around 500MW with the use of energy savers and other cost-effective measures. He also said that the country's first wind power project would become operational next month.

About the recent increase in electricity tariff, Mr Ashraf said the government was still providing a subsidy of Rs65 billion to poor consumers, but wealthy people should not complain about the increase.