Dues settled: After five weeks, IESCO lights up CDA’s offices

Federal secretary’s intervention leads to rationalisation of dues.

ISLAMABAD:

After a five-week suspension, the Islamabad Electric Supply Company (Iesco) on Wednesday restored electricity supply to the offices of the Capital Development Authority.

Electricity was cut off on April 25 after the CDA’s outstanding dues hit a record high of Rs2 billion. A significant portion of these outstanding dues are on the account of nearly 65,000-streetlight within the CDA’s municipal limits.

“The issue has been resolved after newly-appointed Water and Power Secretary Nargis Sethi intervened,” said a statement issued by the CDA’s public relations directorate.

The statement says that Iesco and the CDA have been directed to reconcile their accounts and resolved their issues within a week.

Under the initial settlement, the authority has released Rs300 million that it recently earned from auctioning residential plots, while Rs500 million will also be paid to the Iesco in the near future.

For the past five weeks, the authority had been using a 550KVA generator as an alternate power source for the headquarters building in Sector G-7, while power supply for the offices at the Old Naval Complex was provided by a 350 KVA generator.

The generators were consuming a total of 143-litres of diesel per hour. During a routine working day, each generator was used to run for nine-hour a day.

“Though electricity suspension is not a new phenomenon for the cash-starved CDA, this was the longest the CDA has witnessed in its history,” said an official.

Following suspension on April 25, a committee with representation from the CDA, Iesco and the Federal Investigation Agency was also formed to hash out the issue, but after few meetings, the CDA and Iesco were deadlocked in negotiations over rationalising outstanding electricity dues.

City managers had previously refused to clear the dues, claiming they were exaggerated and calculated using false estimates.

A senior CDA official said Iesco initially agreed to rationalise up to 50 per cent of the outstanding Rs2 billion, but the CDA wanted 75 per cent rationalised.

He said now it had been decided that the CDA would initially pay Rs800 million, while the rest would also be settled at a later date.

Iesco charges the CDA for 65,000 streetlights in Islamabad. The billing is done on the bases of estimates, as there is no mechanism in place to calculate the actual electricity consumption by these streetlights.

He said both departments would weigh the option of installation of meters at different locations in Islamabad to check the electricity consumption of the streetlights.

“If we succeeded in installing such a system, the issue would permanently be resolved,” the official said.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 5^th, 2014.