Centre orders installation of automatic meters for all Sindh depts

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The government has issued directives to state-owned power distributions companies in Sindh to complete the installation of automatic meter reading system for all provincial government department connections within four months.

An official source said that the directives were issued last week while finances will be borne by the Ministry of Water and Power through its entities, HESCO and SEPCO; and no consequential funds would be claimed from the Ministry of Finance and the Federal Board of Revenue.

The government has also decided to immediately remove the management of both the companies and new appointments would be made soon, the source said, adding that initially only provincial government meters would be replaced with automatic meters, while rest of the meters in the region under the company jurisdiction would be replaced later

Currently automatic meters are being installed in the IESCO and LESCO region under the Asian Development Bank financed multi billion rupees loan. The objective is to eliminate electricity theft and prepare the DISCOs for privatisation.

The directives were issued as the government had to borne Rs 50.1 billion losses by waiving them off the outstanding dues of the provincial government claimed by HESCO and SEPCO.

The provincial government of Sindh had claimed that the Hyderabad and Sukkur region DISCOs were massively over billing the provincial government department connections to show decline in their electricity theft.

A committee was constituted to look into the matter and several meetings were held between the GoS and HESCO and SEPCO. The results of joint verification by DISCOs and GoS of the load billing found that only 60 percent billing out of the total billing for the period of July 2010 to January 2016 could be verified.

It was decided that sample results would be applied on all load and billing and 60 percent overall would be considered verified, whereas 40 percent would be treated as non-verified and adjusted accordingly.

Under this settlement, the GoS had to make payment of Rs 27.4 billion which would be treated as full and final settlement of the outstanding bills for last six years. The total arrears were of Rs 77.5 billion.