- Billing fraud and rising generator, UPS prices amidst outages double up citizens miseries as power shortfall also rises to 6000MW
Unannounced load shedding has soared across the country as the gap between electricity’s demand and supply has widened, said media reports.
While power generation stands at 12,000 megawatts (MW), the demand has risen to 18,000 MW due to the intensifying heat, bringing the power shortage to more than 6000 MW.
Daily, 10 to 12 hours of load shedding is experienced in cities, and 20 to 22 hours in villages.
The electricity shortage is augmented by the Islamabad Electricity Supply Company (IESCO)’s negligent billing practices, making consumers pay in excess for the little electricity they consume.
It has become very common in Rawalpindi and Islamabad for consumers to receive electricity bills based on random meter readings as many meter readers do not approach visit their designated areas at all, such as PWD Colony, KorangTown and PakistanTown.
These meter readers continue recording random readings from their offices, and do not check scrupulously for anomalies before billing the customer.
Due to the irregular meter reading, the units indicated pile up to thousands, after which the authority sends cumulative bills to the astonished consumers, totaling many thousands of rupees.
Since there are different rates for different slabs, charging for cumulative units means that top slab rates are being charged to nominal electricity consumers, as well as additional GST and surcharges.
A general store owner, on condition of anonymity, said that neither the EXEN nor the SDO deployed in Koran sub-division could be reached for complaints.
Further, the situation is also encouraging corruption.
Some consumers complained that once the officials knew that a meter’s reading had crossed 2000 to 3000 units they would themselves approach the consumers to correct the reading for almost half of the estimated cost as bribe.
This malpractice plagues even the posh localities in Islamabad’s suburbs, and the IESCO has taken no action against it.
The consumers demanded the new government and the new Water and Power minister to immediately take notice of this corruption.
Thus, the public suffers power outages along with the IESCO’s corruption, and the only ones who seem to be benefiting are generator, UPS and battery dealers.
The prices of these products have surged due to the recent heat spell, said Ahtesham Hassan, an electronics store owner. He added that the rates of these products had increased by Rs. 1000 to 3000.
There are little indications that the situation would improve: the Pakistan Meteorological Department has predicted that the prevailing heat wave would continue during the week, with daytime temperatures expected to increase by 1 to 3 degrees Celsius in Punjab and Sindh in the next three to four days, said a department official.
