PESHAWAR, April 20: The provincial government is planning to take up some important issues with Wapda. On top of the agenda is the issue of the authority’s bid to recover dues of Fata from the provincial government, according to official sources. The sources told Dawn that Wapda had erroneously inflated the provincial government’s arrears by more than Rs170 million, a liability the provincial government had nothing to do with.
“The arrears are actually owed by the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The province has nothing to do with those because the tribal areas are not part of the Frontier province,” said an official in the provincial government.
Wapda had told the provincial government that it owed the authority about Rs708 million in arrears, erroneously adding over Rs170 million arrears of Fata to the account of the provincial government.
“Wapda officers do not even know that the tribal areas have nothing to do with the Frontier province, and they cannot expect the NWFP government to pay arrears of Fata,” said an official source.
Sources said Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani would take up the matter with Wapda chairman who was scheduled to visit Peshawar on April 26.
Alleged excess billing, delay in payment of NWFP’s share in net hydel profit and reconciliation of accounts between the provincial government and the Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) were some of the other issues the provincial government would be taking up with Wapda chief, officials said.
They said it had transpired during reconciliation of accounts that Pesco had excessively billed the provincial government to the extent of hundreds of millions of rupees during the last four years.
Pesco officials, however, refuted the claim. They said the amount had been adjusted in monthly bills of public sector consumers of the provincial government.
The company had been regularly reconciling accounts and monthly bills with the provincial government, they said.
Sources said that Pesco had rejected the NWFP government’s plea that the period of reconciliation should cover the mid-1990s as well.
“Pesco is adamant not to enlarge the scope of the reconciliation exercise. It wants to limit the scope to the period from the time its sitting chief executive took over till now,” said an official.