As many as 300,000 defaulters of the Lahore Electric Supply Company carry a default of Rs 10 billion and even the action of meter disconnection has failed to bear desired results.According to the sources, the list of defaulters included domestic, commercial and industrial consumers. They added that a large number of defaulters have contested the electricity bills in courts, a move to restrict early recovery by the Company.
The sources have pointed out that low recovery has a direct impact on the power generation and the government imposes surcharges to meet the shortage. In other words, they added, the government burdens the fully compliant consumers for the wrongdoing of non-compliant consumers. Especially, the industrial consumers have objected to the imposition of Rs 3.63 surcharge; saying that the government was shifting the system inefficiencies to them. They said this move on the part of the government was increasing the cost of doing business, especially in the manufacturing sector. They have urged termination of the passage of system inefficiencies forthwith to restore viability of the Large Scale Manufacturing (LSM) sector.
The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) has recently released performance report for the year 2014-15 which states that none of the distribution companies (DISCOs) is up to the mark in terms of performance criteria; no company has improved its overall performance (except minor improvements) over the last five years, in fact, there are cases of worsening performance; in relative terms, IESCO appears to be the top performer among two close followers - GEPCO and MEPCO; average performers are LESCO and FESCO; below average performers are K-Electric, PESCO and HESCO; the worst ones are QESCO and SEPCO; and in provincial terms, Punjab-located companies are better performers of the lot.
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