PESHAWAR: The local elected representatives of various areas of provincial capital and officials of Peshawar Electric Supply Company have agreed to remove all illegal power connections till October 10 and resolve the issue of outstanding dues.

A Pesco official told this correspondent that it was a good opportunity to remove the illegal power connections through the local elected representatives and start recovery of the outstanding monthly bills.

The decision, he said, was taken on Wednesday in a meeting held with District Nazim Mohammad Asim Khan in the chair. Pesco Superintending Engineer Khalid Khan, SP Shakirullah Bangash, other officials and district and town councillors, led by Naveedur Rehman, Akhtar Ali and Amirzeb, attended the meeting.

The decision was taken in the backdrop of an attack on a grid station in Gulozai and Mohammadzai areas a few days ago where consumers seized the office to protest excessive power loadshedding.

The participants of the meeting agreed to make coordinated efforts to resolve the problem. They asked the consumers to apply for installation of new power meters so that the issues could be resolved permanently.

The local elders and councillors raised issues pertaining to over-billing, delay in installation of meters and involvement of Pesco employees in encouraging power theft. They asked the Pesco authorities to send them correct bills.

They said that consumers had to repair faulty transformers and remove the faults on their own. They said that raiding parties of the power company had given free hand to the influential consumers and used to take action against the poor Illegal power connections in Peshawar to be removed till Oct 10 only.

The elected representatives said that at least 18-hour loadshedding was carried out in the rural areas of Peshawar. They said that it should be reduced to 12 hours. However, the Pesco officials agreed to reduce the duration of loadshedding to 14 hours with the condition that the consumers would remove illegal connections.

Briefing the meeting, the Pesco officials said that recovery from Gulozai and Mohammadzai areas was about 10 per cent so the excessive loadshedding was a compulsion to overcome the line losses.

They said that elected representatives should play role in recovery of dues and against power theft in other parts of Peshawar district.

SP Shakirullah Bangash said that complaints of people related to power loadshedding should be addressed on priority basis because they were creating law and order situation. He said that Pesco officials always avoided attending their telephone calls whenever the consumers blocked a road or attacked Wapda installations.

“We have submitted documents for installation of meters about one month ago and also paid the fee but meters are not installed for unknown reasons,” Naveedur Rehman told Dawn after attending the meeting.

He said that normal fee for installation of a meter was Rs5,250 but consumers were forced to pay double and triple fee. The Pesco, he said, would install meters within 15 days and remove all the illegal power connections through raiding parties across the board.

The meter readers would regularly check the meters in presence of relevant consumer to ensure correction of bills. The loadshedding would be in accordance with recovery of the dues.

The agreement was duly signed by SE Peshawar, SDO Lala subdivision, SP, ASP rural circle and elected representatives.

Published in Dawn October 1st, 2015

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