Inflated power bills irk Senate panel

Committee on energy discusses fuel charges adjustment

ISLAMABAD:

The members of the Senate Standing Committee on Energy on Friday expressed their anguish over the issuance of inflated power bills.

A meeting of the Senate panel was held under the chairmanship of Senator Saifullah Abro.
The issue of fuel charges adjustment in electricity bills was also discussed in the meeting.
Senator Fida Mohammad lamented the “excessive” electricity bills in the industrial sector of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

Senator Hidayatullah was irked by the electricity bill for his lodges that was over Rs32,000.
He added that the cost of electricity alone was Rs18,362 and the rest of the amount was in taxes.
Power Secretary Asif Hussain told the committee that his electricity bill was the same.
Senator Sana Jamali said there was 12 hours of power outages in Quetta but the bills were still excessive.

Abro, the chairman of the committee, quipped that there were other problems that the energy minister had to sort out.

“Gas is lost somewhere and it has to be found,” he added.

The power secretary informed the committee that furnace oil, LNG and coal had become more expensive in October.

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“Gas supply will be further reduced by January 15.”

The chairman of the panel noted that the contract of the K-Electric had expired in 2015 and nothing had been done in this connection so far.

“From this, one can gauge the seriousness of the Power Division and other departments.”
The additional secretary assured the panel that an agreement would be reached with the KE during the tenure of the present government.

The members of the committee noted that they, the politicians, had to put up with all the abuse but nobody posed questions to the bureaucrats.

They added that they were worried about how to face their constituents.

Energy Minister Hammad Azhar said there were big mafias in the power sector.
“The whole system has become disturbed because of the lack of balance in power and petroleum sectors.”

Last month, the national power regulator had allowed up to Rs1.68 per unit increase in the electricity tariff from November 1 in order to phase out power subsidies.

The tariff hike was the first phase of eliminating power subsidies. More increases are on the cards as government is working on the second and third phases of reducing subsidies in the power sector. Due to the increase in the base tariff, the government would collect Rs135 billion extra annually.

According to a notification issued then, Nepra had decided to increase the electricity tariff by up to Rs1.68 for domestic consumers and Rs1.39 per unit for commercial and industrial consumers. The increase was not applied to consumers using up to 200 units per month.