LAHORE: Leader of Opposition in the provincial assembly of Sindh Haleem Adil Sheikh has sought immediate removal of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (HESCO), saying that the CEO HESCO Rehan Hamid had managed his posting through the former Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Power and Energy.
In a letter to Hammad Azhar, Federal Minister for Energy, Sheikh sought a high-level inquiry against the CEO and other corrupt officers of the Disco. A copy of the letter is available with Business Recorder.
He has further alleged that the Personal Assistant of the CEO HESCO was misusing his office on behalf of his boss for posting and transfers of SDOs, Engineers, and ROs in violation of the PEPCO policies.
“During the past six months, a large number of transformers’ blast cases were reported in which 13 innocent persons were burnt to death and many seriously injured. Recently, two people were died in Kuneri Umerkot,” the letter reads.
Meanwhile, sources close to the Minister have further revealed that he also received complaints against the former SAPM Tabish Gohar for managing inductions in the distribution companies (Discos) as well as their Board of Directors either from the K-Electric or a private controversial firm from Karachi.
They said the indecisiveness of the members of BoDs of Discos is leading to undue delay in procurement of stock materials throughout the country. Majority of the Board members are either from the generation side or they are professors from universities with little experience of dealing with day to day affairs of Discos.
Also, they added, some of them are involved in the politics of manufacturers. All these factors, they said, are adding problems to the Discos, as not only corrupt practices are rampant but also the Discos are short of material.
On the other hand, the field offices of these Discos are compelled to ask the consumers to purchase material from the open market at a higher cost due to a severe shortage in stores, they added. This indecisiveness and delay has resulted in high escalation of material prices.
It may be noted that the Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO) has been unable to procure transformers, single and three-phase meters and other material, affecting the routine field operations besides opening various ways of corruption in the company.
Reliable sources have blamed the Board of Directors for its failure in taking a timely decision, saying that indecisiveness on the part of the Board led to delay in procurement of the material. Prices of the same material have almost doubled since then because of the ineptness of the Board members, they said.
Similarly, the sources said that CEO Faisalabad Electric Supply Company (FESCO) has cut the procurement of material by half for the current year because of the price escalation in the market.
A similar situation is prevailing over the other DISCOs, they added. They said all the five Discos in Punjab are short of material due to the fact that the Board members were chosen single-handedly.
This scribe kept contacting both Haleem Adil Sheikh and former SAPM Tabish Gohar for their response. However, none of them responded to repeated calls as well as messages.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021