Nawaz gives nod to hand PESCO over to KP govt

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Sunday approved the handing over of the Peshawar Electric Supply Company (PESCO) to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, a private TV channel reported.
The PM will formally invite KP Chief Minister Pervez Khattak in a few days to take over the company.
The PM also plans to place the responsibility of all finances including revenue collection and the recovery of dues with the K-P government.
Hours after the approval, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) said on Twitter that Khattak welcomed the move, but the provincial government wanted control over KP’s entire power generation setup, including royalty and control of dams.
The PTI also said that Nawaz should ensure KP’s share in the revenue generated from power generation after the transfer, as well as taking care of over Rs 100 billion in dues to the provincial government.
The KP CM will soon write a letter to the federal government in this regard.
The move comes days after PTI Chairman Imran Khan had said that the KP government would eliminate power theft and generate cheap electricity for the people if the federal government handed PESCO over to it.
Earlier, Water and Power Minister Khawaja Asif had said that immediate transfer of control was doable.
“Yes it [transfer of control] can be done immediately. He [Imran] can take control of PESCO and handle the distribution of electricity and recovery,” he had said.
“This is not about us failing. Over the past three, four months, there has been a reduction in line losses and theft. We do not claim there has been radical change, but there has been reduction, there has been improvement.”