GILGIT, Nov 11: The Northern Areas public works department has formed teams to check power theft and misuse of electricity. Magistrates, police and Frontier Constabulary personnel and PWD staff would be included in the teams.

Official sources said Northern Areas public works department would launch an across-the-board campaign against power thefts and the supply lines found illegal would be cut for five months and people responsible for the theft would be fined.

The sources said the department had fixed fuses with connection lines to desist consumers from using high voltage appliances.

If the fuses found dislocated or tampered with, concerned people would be fined, they said.

The teams, they said, would also inspect electricity meters, power distribution system and payments of utility bills.

But consumers in Gilgit said these measures were not new for them and every year the department hoodwinked consumers in the name of ending loadshedding without actually increasing the power generation.

They said this so-called new step would soon meet a fate similar to those of the past as power generation in the region was short of demand.

The successive governments, he said, had been making tall claims to ensure adequate power supply, but to no avail. The government had purchased two thermal generators of one megawatt each for Skardu and Gilgit at a cost of Rs200 million, but they developed faults soon after their installation in Gilgit.

Consumers in the hilly areas of the region were facing a similar situation, but their complaints never got attention of the authorities, the sources said.

The government had allocated huge funds in the current ADP for power sector, but the work on identified power generation schemes was very slow on the part of the officials concerned, they said.