Chief Executive Officer of the Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco), Engineer Shafqat Sial has launched an aggressive recovery campaign against the defaulters of 12.5 billion electricity bills. Addressing a news conference here on Monday, Sial said there are more than Rs 12 billion outstanding electricity dues from the Federal and Punjab government departments and private sector.
While giving the details, he said that Rs 7.51 billion are receivable from central government and Rs 5 billion from Punjab government. Private sector is defaulter of Rs 2.6 billion. He said Lesco could not recover Rs 5 billion from the Punjab government's departments including city district governments and asked the media to support the company in targeting the big guns and Punjab government's departments. If Lesco gets this outstanding money, then there would be less load shedding of electricity.
Sharafat Ali Sial, said majority of defaulters are rich and influential people who either are involved in electricity theft or are not paying out standing dues, more over Lesco has to recover over Rs 5 billion from Punjab government, Sial mentioned. Moreover the recent incident of firing on Lesco's raiding team has created fear among the Lesco employees. "We have no force to stop electricity theft and the staff feels insecure while raiding such areas, we need media's support in pinpointing the theft of the electricity.
Sial said there are a few Lesco officers / employees who are also involved in electricity theft and over billing, we have suspended many of them on different complaints and departmental inquiries against many are underway. The number of penalties on such officers in Lesco is on record, if compared with other Discos", Sial said the percentage of recoveries is also one of the highest and more recoveries would help us to increase the electricity quota in Lesco's jurisdiction, which ultimately would result in less load shedding, he added.
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