Cabinet meeting: Overbilling haunts govt as consumers suffer

After an unsatisfactory audit, prime minister forms committee to probe the issue

ISLAMABAD:

The issue of overbilling that has earned the government scathing criticism from consumers continues to haunt the prime minister and his aides. Inflated electricity bills triggered protests in several towns and cities, forcing the premier to order an audit of the issue.

On Friday, a special meeting of the federal cabinet reviewed the preliminary report of two audit firms which ironically claimed that 31% increase in electricity bills was due to 22% increase in tariff coupled with 9% increase in consumption. The prime minister, however, wasn’t happy with the report as he constituted a high-level committee to probe the issue of overbilling.



The audit was aimed to find out as to who [Wapda or someone else] was involved in overbilling, why hue and cry over overbilling was raised after one year [as tariff was increased in 2012 and was implemented in October 2013 but people did not protest till summer of 2014] and whether overbilling was the result of ending the subsidy policy for all slabs of consumers.

According to sources, the audit firms have submitted their preliminary report which worked on the above mentioned guideline. According to an official handout, the cabinet was told that two audit firms were hired to probe the issue of overbilling.

Talking to The Express Tribune, a federal minister said that the previous government had given subsidy to consumers using 100-200 units. These consumers, he said, were not affected by overbilling.

“The consumers who used 300-500 units were affected due to overbilling,” he said, adding that now the secretary water and power has proposed Rs22 billion subsidies to the slab which consumes 300-500 units.



Sources said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who was chairing the meeting, was not satisfied with the audit report and constituted a high-level committee to probe into the issue of overbilling and to propose relief measures for domestic consumers.

The committee will submit its report on November 6 to the cabinet. Sources said the cabinet was of the opinion that overbilling was an attempt to turn the people against the government, particularly during days of the sit-ins in Islamabad.

According to the official handout, the mandate of the committee will be to work out whether the reduction of Rs65 billion in circular debt was actually the result of recovery of arrears/receivables or was it because of overbilling. It will also propose the most appropriate form of relief package for domestic consumers.

Minister for Finance Ishaq Dar will be the convener of the committee while federal ministers Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Khawaja Asif, Engr Khurram Dastgir Khan and Secretary Water and Power Younus Dagha are its members

Ministries’ performance review

Presenting a report on the performance of the Petroleum Ministry, Minister for Petroleum Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said the ministry had implemented petroleum policy 2012. “During last one year, 44 new exploration agreements are signed, 137 oil wells are spudded and 37 oil and gas fields were discovered,” he said while comparing his performance with that of the previous government.

PM says growth stunted

Commenting on economic state of the country, the prime minister said economic growth which Pakistan had begun to experience prior to the sit-in in the capital and come to a halt. “The country would have been in a much better state economically if there were no protest,” the premier said, while rejecting all rigging allegations made by protesters in Islamabad.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 1^st, 2014.