LAHORE, Feb 29: The line losses of the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) were recorded at 24.67 per cent during the first seven months of the current fiscal year, down from 25.6 per cent in the corresponding period last year.
According to its progress report for the last seven months, the authority lost around 1.87 per cent of the total power supplied in auxiliary consumption, 7.2 per cent in transmission and 15.6 per cent in distribution.
Of late, the authority has started excluding auxiliary losses from the overall losses head. After a hiatus of more than four decades, Wapda has started insisting that the units used in auxiliary consumption should not be allowed to worsen its line losses scenario.
The exclusion of this head provides Wapda a relief of around two per cent. If this logic is applied, the line losses for the first seven months come down to 22.8 per cent.
Similarly, the line losses for January were recorded at 28.95 per cent, down from 31.14 per cent during the corresponding month last year. After excluding auxiliary losses, the losses stand at 26.2 per cent and 28.7 per cent.
Its arrears have gone up to Rs70.254 billion. Private arrears, however, came down by around Rs2 billion due to improved recovery from the private sector. The arrears from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas continue haunting the authority at Rs32.734 billion. Similarly, arrears from the public sector remained high at Rs44.55 billion.
During the first seven months, Wapda billed Rs137.3 billion and collected Rs126.1 billion at a percentage of 91.9. Its collection from the private sector was commendable at 99.33 per cent. However, the recovery rate from government departments was only 68.59 per cent.
The working of transformers continued to be a sore point with Wapda, as 4,041 were damaged during the first seven months of the year. During the corresponding seven months last year, the loss had been 3,056.
The capacity of this year's loss was 400MVA, whereas it had been 307MVA last year. During the month of January, 491 transformers were damaged, as against 278 last January.
Thankfully, no Wapda employee fell victim to the poor network during the month of January. However, nine citizens died in network-related accidents, bringing the number of network victims during the first seven months of the current fiscal year to 130 -- 43 Wapda employees and 87 others. In the same period, 51 Wapda employees and 21 others had non-fatal accidents.
Tripping also continued. The consumers suffered 287,169 minor power failures of less than 20 minutes each as against 279,355 during the corresponding seven months last year. Some 38,491 major breakdowns were recorded, as against 31,543 last year.
Commenting on the report, a former member (power) maintained that a reduction in line losses could only be appreciated. But, the Wapda people must not let their guards down, he said.
He suspected that the reduction might have been a result of the seasonal effect on billing and collection, but said that credit was still due to Wapda for reducing line losses to whatever extent it had.
Once it was able to arrest line losses, the authority would be able to concentrate better on making other improvements in the system, he said.