Small electricity consumers spared fuel charges

The Lahore High Court on Monday abolished the fuel adjustment duty for small consumers of electricity using up to 350 units in a month, and permitted the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) to get fuel adjustment charges from industrial consumers, while vacating the stay order which was earlier granted on the matter.
Justice Muhammad Khalid Mehmood Khan passed the order on about 700 identical petitions by domestic and industrial consumers against the fuel adjustment charges being added in the monthly electricity bills by WAPDA and its subsidiary bodies such as the Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO) and the Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO). According to the order, only those domestic consumers using more than 350 units in a month will have to bear the burden of fuel adjustment charges. On the other hand, there will be no relaxation for the industrial sector in the billing. Now that the court’s order has come, the industrial consumers who did not pay the fuel charges in the last few months due to the stay order by the LHC, will have to pay all the pending fuel adjustment charges to WAPDA.
Khwaja Abdur Rahim, the counsel for WAPDA, justified the fuel adjustments charges to meet the electricity cost. While the petitioners’ counsel, Mian Mehmoodur Rasheed gave arguments against the fuel adjustment duty which, he asserted, was unlawfully imposed in the current bills as it was implemented from backdates to collect the fuel charges of the past months. About domestic consumers, he said the poor and middle class people were under great stress due to additional charge being added in the bills by WAPDA and that they were unable to pay the inflated bills due to general price hike already affecting them badly. Initially, the court had restrained WAPDA from receiving fuel adjustment charges on a petition filed by Gulshan Spinning Mills and other industrial units against WAPDA and others, challenging the recovery of fuel adjustment charges for the past months by retrospective billing. However the court on Thursday vacated the stay and allowed WAPDA to collect the charges from industrial consumers while giving relief to small domestic consumers by fixing a limit for starting fuel charges.
The petitioners for industrial units said they had paid electricity bills for the months of April and May, but respondents, including WAPDA, acting retrospectively added 20 percent amount as fuel adjustment charges for the months of April and May in the bill of October. The petitioners contended that the bills for the past months (April, May) had been paid, and that it had become a close and past transaction.