Federal Water and Power Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar has directed power distribution companies to strictly follow the load management programme in order to avoid unscheduled load-shedding, maximise recovery of bills, improve efficiency and minimise losses.
He stated this while presiding over a meeting of the CEOs of power distribution companies here on Saturday, which reviewed the recovery position, unscheduled outages and related issues.
The minister said unscheduled load-shedding was creating a number of difficulties for the consumers and it should be the government’s priority to end it immediately. The government was utilising all resources to enhance power generation to reduce outages, he said.
He asked the National Power Construction Corporation (NPCC) to issue the load management programme, keeping in view the daily power generation, to all power companies well before time so that they could be able to plan scheduled outages for both urban and rural areas. “Action will be taken in case the programme is not implemented,” he warned.
Mukhtar directed the NPCC and energy management cell to work out a comprehensive and feasible plan to provide maximum relief to consumers, particularly the industrial sector, from load management.
Calling for improvement in recovery, particularly from defaulters, he said better recoveries would help the companies produce more power. He asked them to disconnect electricity supply without any discrimination of the private and government consumers who did not pay the bills.
At the same time, the power companies were told to bring down their transmission and distribution losses to the minimum level.
In further directives, the CEOs were asked to address consumer complaints, timely deliver bills to the consumers and give them at least 10 days for payment.
Earlier, the CEOs briefed the minister on their recovery position and individual recovery targets. They gave the assurance that they would work hard to collect the amount from consumers and defaulters beyond the targets set for June.
Published In The Express Tribune, June 17th, 2012.
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