LAHORE: The Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) on Saturday started educating the public at Samsani village (Johar Town) about socially boycotting those involved in power theft.

The Lesco teams also placed banners in the village, requesting the residents to boycott such people. They also got announcements made from the mosques, informing the public at large about the defaulters and boycotting them socially.

“In fact, some people in the village are not only defaulters of millions of rupees but also involved in power theft. That is why, the teams have adopted this way to recover dues from the defaulters,” said an official source in the company.

“We are also requesting the people to inform the teams in case of power theft by anyone,” he added. He said Samsani village was notorious for power theft.

Meanwhile, the Lesco teams detected on Saturday another 247 connections from where the customers were pilfering electricity in all its circles of five districts (Lahore, Sheikhupura, Nankana Sahib, Kasur and Okara) on the 64th day of anti-power theft campaign.

The Lesco spokesman told the media that the company also submitted applications for registration of cases against 242 electricity thieves, out of which 125 FIRs have been registered in respective police stations with 20 arrests.

He said among the seized connections, six were commercial, agricultural (2) and domestic (238). All these connections were severed and charged with a total of 410,236 units as detection bill amounting to Rs22.245 million.

During the 64 days of the campaign, the spokesman said the company detected so far the pilferage on 24,965 power connections and submitted 24,712 FIR applications against electricity thieves to the relevant police stations out of which 23,879 FIRs have been registered, while 12,334 accused have so far been arrested.

Meanwhile, the company in collaboration with tehsildars (recovery) recovered Rs8.4m from 358chronic defaulters.

On the other hand, the SNGPL teams on Saturday disconnected another 66 connections for gas pilferage and imposed Rs2.324m fine.

Published in Dawn, November 12th, 2023