Businessmen in a meeting at Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) strongly protested against the installation of new electricity meters which run 30-35 percent faster than the old ones and called upon the government to ensure their urgent replacement to save business activities from further damage and consumers from unjustified overbilling.
Chairing the meeting, ICCI President Muzzamil Hussain Sabri said that business community has since long been demanding the replacement of new meters as they were running faster but the distribution companies (Discos) had been denying this stand.
“However, Prime Minister’s Inspection Commission has now proved this fact as it has confirmed that Discos have installed new meters which are running at least 30-35 percent faster than the old ones,” said Sabri.
He said that the government should order Discos to urgently replace all faster meters and ensure standardisation of all electricity meters to ensure that consumers are billed only for actual consumption of electricity.
“Despite long hours of power load shedding, consumers are crying against heavy bills, which shows that massive presumptive billing has been done,” he said.
He said that Discos have replaced millions of meters in the past couple of years and have reportedly generated about Rs 15-16 billion as additional revenue for July 2014 due to massive overbilling.
He stressed that the government take stern action against the culprits and also direct the Discos to return 35 percent money back to the power consumers. He said that the government should ask all Discos to upload monthly revenue collection figures on respective websites to ensure transparency.
Businessmen termed the installation of faster meters a criminal activity just to fleece the consumers in order to enhance the revenue of power companies.
They said massive electricity bills have drastically reduced the purchasing power of majority of people and badly affected business activities as consumers have been forced to cut down on the purchase of many items as a major chunk of their earnings goes into paying the very high power bills.
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