The Ministry of Water and Power has directed the Lahore Electricity Supply Company (LESCO) to resolve the issue of payments of call center charges to the contacting company Ovex Technologies, an official source revealed on Thursday.
The source said that a row had emerged between the companies as LESCO claimed that it had not extended the contract of the call center operator after April 2013, while the operator claimed that they were asked verbally by the management to continue. The extension was always given with a few months delay.
The same practice continued after signing of the contract in April 2009 for an initial period of one year. Ovex provided all the infrastructure and 35 trained call center agents per month for the operations. The company was paid Rs 1.26 million per month for the call centre operations.
Ovex claimed that they should be paid for the services rendered from October 2013 to October 2014 along with the amount erroneously deducted from February 2012 to September 2012 from their invoice on the pretext of shortage of staff. It claimed that it was being penalized for working fairly and delivering as per the service levels agreed with LESCO.
The ministry has directed LESCO to resolve the issue at the board level. The management practices of the distribution companies (DISCOs) have come under criticism in the past as rules and procedures are not always followed. The matter was likely to remain unresolvable at the management level so the ministry has asked for a resolution at the board level, the source added.
