Consumer court: Former chief minister wins new generator

Settlement reached in faulty generator case that ran for almost two years.

LAHORE:

Former chief minister Dost Muhammad Khosa and Sunshine Engineering Company reached a settlement in a 19-month old case in a consumer court here on Monday.

Engineer Sajjad Hussain Khan, a close associate of Khosa, had filed a suit against Sunshine Engineering Company claiming that the company had sold Khosa a faulty generator.

Under the settlement, the company will install a new generator in Khosa’s house. The generator will be tested for a month, during which Sunshine Engineering will bear the repair expenses.

The petitioner had contended that the former chief minister had bought the generator, for Rs172,000 on May 30, 2011. The generator, however, began to malfunction in a few days and went out of order. Sunshine Engineering had given the petitioner no warrantee on the product, Khan said.

He told the court that he had requested the respondent to fix the generator for the first time on June 7, then on June 17 and then July 5. Sunshine Engineering, he said, had billed them Rs26,400 for the repairs. The generator stopped working within a few days again.

Khan said the company was served a legal notice by the petitioner on August 3, but it did not respond. He prayed the court to direct the respondent to install a new generator and pay Khosa Rs2 million as compensation and damages.

Sunshine Engineering, however, contended that the generator had been run on substandard oil and was overloaded.

Rana Tanveer, a staff officer of the former CM, said Khosa had purchased two generators from the company, one for his house in DG Khan, the other for his residence in GOR-1. The generator installed at his house in GOR-1 did not work properly from the first day though it remained there for more than 25 days. He said Sunshine Engineering Company Chief Executive Muhammad Waqas was notified of the problem and he asked them to bring the generator to the company’s workshop.

A few days later, Waqas called back to say the generator had been repaired but it did not work when they tested it in their workshop.

Tanveer said the workshop staff demanded more money from them and said they needed to change some parts. “We asked them why we should pay for the spares when we had just bought it,” he said.

When contacted, the Sunshine Engineering CEO said the company had not supplied a faulty generator. The generator had just been carelessly handled. He said that he had warned Khosa not to run more than two air conditioners on the generator. However, when a company worker went to inspect the generator, he found that three to four air conditioners were being operated on it. There was also no Mobil oil in the tank, he said.  “Why would we offer to replace the old generator if we were supplying faulty generators?” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 14^th, 2013.