LAHORE, April 6: The Water and Power Development Authority on Sunday refused to write off Rs23.92 billion arrears against the Federally Administered Tribal Areas as proposed by the NWFP governor.

In response to the provincial governor’s suggestions, the authority has not only shown its inability to forgo its Rs24 billion bills but also to implement his other recommendations on various legal and fiscal grounds.

The Governor’s Secretariat had recently proposed some steps to improve collection of dues from tribal areas and dispatched the same on March 21 to the authority for preparing its response.

The governor — the administrative head of Fata — had suggested a write-off of all arrears against tribal areas and introduction of a special tariff for roping in consumers of this belt to pay power charges.

He also suggested to the authority to provide electricity metres free of charge, and progressively reduce loadshedding in areas where payment situation improves. He called for recruiting staff for the installation of new meters and collection of bills from the tribal areas.

Reacting to the proposals, a highly-placed source in Wapda said: “The authority, as a utility, designed to operate on commercial lines, cannot continuously absorb losses for reasons beyond its control and non-payment of outstanding dues from Fata. The authority faces severe economic crunch in meeting its financial commitments to the independent power producers (IPPs) and gas companies because of default from Fata. Keeping all these factors in view, Wapda is not in a position to forgo Rs23.92 billion accumulated against Fata till Feb 28, 2003. Another month has been added and the default could have gone much beyond Rs24 billion now.”

As far as the suggestion for lowering the tariff for Fata is concerned, he said that approval of tariff was purely a prerogative of the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) and any suggestion for negotiated tariff should be directed to it rather than the authority.

But assigning any role to jirga or locals, in this regard, would be totally illegal, he claimed.

The government has taken steps to withdraw subsidies on power tariff in Fata by introducing unit rate system with effect from January 1, 1999. The authority had been charging special tariff of Rs1.55 to Rs1.97 per unit from the area under instructions from the Chief Executive issued on June 29, 2000. But the situation did not improve. Then Nepra decided to levy normal tariff, as in the rest of the country, which led to further piling up of dues, he maintained.