‘Rs46b recovered from power pilferers’

Power Division Secretary Rashid Langrial on Sunday said that an amount of Rs46 billion had been recovered from the power pilferers from September 7 to October 31 during the ongoing anti-power theft campaign.

“Today as the results for the first two months (53 days to be exact) are out, I must put things in perspective. Our estimated annual losses across the national grid for the current year are Rs589 billion. Of the total Rs589, roughly Rs199 billion come from ex-FTA, Balochistan tube-wells and AJK,” he revealed on a social media handle.

These areas are not the focus of this campaign because of their own peculiarities, he maintained, adding that AJK collects its own bills but does not pay at the same rate because it sees it as a contractually disputed payment; ex-FATA because they are exempted from meters due to a policy of appeasement in the wake of integration and Balochistan tube-wells on account of various factors, least of which is not the enforcement challenge.

“We are working on the remaining problem space of Rs390 billion of which we are able to recover Rs46 billion in 53 days i.e. Rs867 million per day. If the same level of state support and field effort can be maintained (and that is a big if, I must admit), 80 per cent of the problem space gets resolved”.

The secretary said they were conscious of the challenge of sustaining the drive beyond the campaign but had “demonstrated beyond doubt” that there was nothing that could not be resolved with the right mix of state’s will and field effort.