SUKKUR, Feb 13: The officials of Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (Hesco) have been directed to ensure cent per cent recovery, reduce line losses, and refrain from issuing detection bills.

The Chief Executive Officer of Hesco, Chaudhry Guftar Ahmed Anjum addressed a press conference at the main office Sukkur on Wednesday.

He said Hesco was a commercial organisation providing electricity to people of Sindh, except Karachi. He said around Rs21 billion was receivable from both government and private consumers.

He said some 2,89,266 connections had been permanently disconnected as Rs4.43 billion were outstanding as officials failed to recover arrears. He said Rs7.5 billion were outstanding against 2,83,000 consumers.

Regarding new connections he said, around 17,586 had been sanctioned and installed which had brought the total number of Hesco consumers to 1.43 million, including 11,53,230 domestic, 2,34,376 commercial, 21,213 industrial, and 23,906 tubewell connections.

Guftar Anjum said new power transformers worth Rs400 million had been installed under the 6th STG Programme at eight places upgrading the capacity of 66 KV grid stations to 132 KV, providing better voltage to consumers. These include Arain Road Sukkur, Larkana, Qasim Abad, Pir-Jo-Goth, Kandiaro,

Khairpur, Rohri, Qazi Ahmed and Humayun grid stations, while extension work on Daur was underway.

Hesco Chief directed the officials to provide better services through Customer Service Centre. He forbade issuing detection bills. According to Hesco policy, new connections will be installed on payment of Demand Notices.

He said incentive package should be provided to permanently disconnected defaulters whose disconnection period was over five years and waive off 50 per cent arrears on receiving payment.