Power plays: MEPCO double-bills consumers to stay afloat

After govt agencies failed to pay default, MEPCO began to charge consumers.

MULTAN:

After failing in recovering its arrears from various government departments, the Multan Electric Power Company (Mepco) has issued two bills to its consumers in one month.

“We were owed billions of rupees in electric bills from several government offices and the Prime Minister stepped in on their behalf. We need to recover the money somehow,” said a Mepco official, Zahoor Shams.

Mepco officials said that they were trying to recover billions of rupees from several government departments but that they were constantly being thwarted by government officials in higher office.
“The proper thing to do would be to force government departments such as Water and Sanitary Agency (Wasa) and the post office to pay their bills but they are being let off,” he said. On Sunday morning over 300 people protested in various parts of Multan against Mepco’s decision to double bill consumers. “Why should we pay for the mistakes of these huge company’s?” asked Khanpur resident Kamran Asad. “I can barely afford one month’s power bills given how they are always rising. None of us will be able to pay two in a go,” he added.

Mepco officials said that they had doubled the bills because they were desperate. “We are within our rights to double the bill because June is technically the end of the fiscal year and we need to recover the money. If we don’t recover any amount then people will face even more problems when it comes to load shedding,” Mepco line worker Haider said. “I realise that this is the most unfair way of recovering the money because these people weren’t even warned but there is simply no other solution,” he said.

“The prime minister and government should be forcing government offices to pay their power bills on time and with interest for their defaults. Instead, they are completely letting them off and giving them more time,” said a protester Saad Zaki.

Mepco has now issued two bills to its regular customers in the month of May. People who had previously paid the bill on May 5, have now been issued another bill in the same month on May 31.

Mepco officials have refused to address the problem in detail and said that the double billing was due to the end of the fiscal year but several sources from within the company have come forward and said that there was no other way for the company to recover its money. “Ideally, we would want the defaulters to pay off the money but that hasn’t happened and we are already running a deficit,” said a Mepco official. “The company is not to blame for this situation. It is the government,” he added.

The protesters said that they would continue to take to the streets if the double billing wasn’t stopped. “We can’t pay this amount.

We can barely manage to pay the monthly bills,” said a Sandhu resident Rameeza Lal.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 30^th, 2011.