PESHAWAR, March 17: The federal authorities concerned have warned the provincial governments to clear their electricity dues and monthly bills to avoid at-source deduction from their federal transfers, well-placed official sources told Dawn.

“Federal authorities have recently directed the provincial government(s) to pay their monthly electricity bills in time to avoid at source deduction (from their federal transfers),” said the sources requesting anonymity.

Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) has a claim of over Rs800m as electricity dues against NWFP government departments, their attach wings, semi-autonomous bodies, district governments and their subordinate institutions.

The latest directives served on the NWFP came at a time when the provincial departments were already engaged with the local Wapda staff to reconcile their figures of electricity charges paid and the arrears Wapda has laid claim to against them.

Though the two sides were busy trying to resolve the long- pending issue for well over two months, the federal government told provinces to clear Wapda’s dues apparently in an effort to help the utility recover its arrears from the public sector entities and electricity consumers of Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).

Wapda has to receive around Rs30 billion from the federal and provincial governments’ departments and Fata consumers as power dues.

The largest chunk of dues is to be paid by Fata consumers who, according to Wapda sources, owe over Rs22 billion to Wapda.

The latest instructions by federal authorities, said the sources, were necessitated to exert pressure on the provincial government after the current reconciliation drive did not yield positive result as far as Wapda’s stand was concerned.

Official sources in the provincial government also confirmed that the on-going reconciliation drive had failed to resolve the issue.

In several instances, according to sources, representatives of the provincial government departments did not bring proper official record to substantiate their stand. In some of the cases, Wapda’s representatives did not produce the record.

“Though the current drive brought a rare opportunity to resolve NWFP-Wapda differences, the two sides could not take benefit of the chance, apparently, sticking to their stands,” said an official of the provincial government.

In an attempt to make the provincial government’s departments clear their dues, NWFP chief secretary had issued directives to administrative secretaries of all the departments to clear the dues by Feb 7.

In this respect, Wapda’s subsidiary organization — Peshawar Electricity Supply Company (Pesco) — had also been asked to disconnect electricity supply to those provincial public sector electricity consumers who fail to comply with the directives by Feb 7.

Later, the deadline was extended till Feb 27 after majority of the public sector electricity consumers could not comply with the directives.