LAHORE: Line losses at the Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO) network have reduced by 2 percent to 12 percent at present from 14 percent back in 2018, thus saving Rs6 billion of the Company in terms of sales. The total number LESCO customers falls around 5 million.

Talking to this scribe, Chief Executive Officer LESCO Muhajid Pervaz Chattah said the anti-theft squad of the Company has carried out meter checking of 52579 consumers, including 49,753 domestic, 1,981 commercial, 541 agriculture and 304 industrial consumers. He said LESCO had made 48,267 requests for registration of First Information Report (FIR) out of which 30,063 were entertained by the police.

Also, he pointed out that 36 employees of the Company were arrested for patronizing power theft. He said LESCO has charged 107,543,461 units with a value of Rs1608892 with a recovery of Rs803,892, which comes around 50 percent. He said the present government started an effective anti-power theft campaign in 2018. A good feature of this campaign was that the provincial and district administrators right from Chief Secretary Punjab, to IG Punjab, and Secretary Power were on board.

We held online meetings with all the Commissioners, RPOs, and DPOs of all the circles and made sure their full cooperation, which turned into the success of this campaign, he added.

He said there are no 'no-go areas' in LESCO, other than a few border areas. There was a huge quantum of power stealing in border areas for three years, he pointed out.

According to him, the quantum of theft is merely one percent although one percent is too much being a big sales company. "There may be two types of comparisons, including a comparison with the corresponding period and another comparison with the target set by the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA).

When I took over in February 2018, LESCO losses were abnormally high on both ends, i.e. in the range of 2 percent, which means Rs6 billion in terms of revenue. "However, he added, with the hard work of my team and the cooperation of the provincial government, we are meeting the NEPRA target as of today and line losses have been reduced by 2 percent losses in the last three years.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020