Power distribution: ‘Discos appear to be overbilling customers’

Lahore High Court seeks schedule for power outages, explanation for high load shedding in Punjab.

LAHORE:

Power distribution companies (Discos) appear to be overbilling ordinary customers in order to claim high recovery rates, observed Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial on Thursday.

Hearing a petition against unscheduled power cuts in the Punjab, the judge observed that the Council of Common Interest had decided that electricity supply of 350 megawatts be withdrawn from the Karachi Electricity Supply Company and added to the national grid, but this decision had not been implemented.

Justice Bandial said that though the court could not supply electricity to the people, it could issue orders for the implementation of Articles 9, 14 and 25 of the Constitution – which deal with the fundamental rights of citizens to be treated equally and with dignity.

Earlier, petitioner Advocate Muhammad Azhar Siddique told the court that the Punjab’s urban areas were currently without electricity for 12 to 14 hours a day and rural areas for 18 to 20 hours a day. Meanwhile, Karachi was getting power cuts of one or two hours a day, he said.

Asked what proof he had of this, the petitioner said that he had made inquiries from the KESC and submitted newspaper articles about power outages. “And we are suffering 12 to 16 hours of load shedding here [in Lahore] every day,” he said.

He said that there was no load shedding in Bahria Town in Lahore, while there was rampant electricity theft in some areas. He said that he did not believe claims by the Lahore Electric Supply Company and the Faisalabad Electric Supply Company that they had recovery rates of 99 per cent.

The chief justice observed that the distribution companies were able to claim this rate because they were overbilling “people like you and me”. He said that the court had already taken notice of this and sought explanations from the authorities concerned.

The chief justice ordered a deputy attorney general to get detailed briefings from an additional secretary for water and power, from the National Transmission and Dispatch Company and from distribution companies, about the power outages across the country, about why there appeared to be more load shedding in the Punjab, and why the CCI’s instructions had not been complied with. The hearing was adjourned for April 11.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 5^th, 2013.