LAHORE: Pursuing the idea from its Board of Directors (BoD), the Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) has launched mobile application ‘Lesco Light’ for over five million consumers.
The new mobile App would facilitate presently 5.6 million customers of the distribution company (Disco) by offering updates on load management plans, provisioning of tax certificate for filing of income tax return, online lodging and tracking of complaints, availability of duplicate bills, online bill payment, information about billing and payment, online applications for new connections along with tracking facility, online payment against demand notices, and updating of consumer profile including change of name, tariff, load, and mobile number. Valuable customers of the Disco would be able to get register through their CNIC number.
Chairman BoD Lesco Syed Zahoor Hussain launched the App on Monday afternoon by adding it to his cell phone in front of media. Chief Executive Officer Lesco Ch Muhammad Amin along with the top management was also present on the occasion.
While differentiating it from earlier App ‘Roshan Pakistan’, the CEO Lesco said the App of ‘Lesco Light’ would be supported by a backend monitoring mechanism to enable the top management for tracking of applications and complaints by the consumers. The App would ensure deadlines for the staff and the department heads would automatically be receiving messages regarding latest updates, he added.
Speaking on the occasion, the Chairman BoD Lesco said the objective of the mobile App is to facilitate customers with well in time quality services without extra cost. Transparency would be another major objective of the whole exercise by keeping the company management into the loop of the service availability to consumers and finally change the management mindset through performance evaluation.
In order to minimize the cost of this exercise in the shape of tariff or circular debt at the end of the day, he stressed, efficiency of the management would be required to reduce losses and improve recovery through capacity building.
Asim Shaukat, a BoD member, said this App would be a ray of hope for consumers if the Lesco management is able to secure consumers’ confidence by timely responding to queries.
To a query, the CEO Lesco said procurement order has been placed for 81500 single phase meters and a backlog of 79000 pending applications would be cleared by the end of January. The Chairman BoD added that a delay in procurement was due to the cartelization of manufacturers and quality of material. Price escalation due to the uncertainty out of the Covid-19 pandemic also played a role in this respect. The Board could not disallow proper process of procurement in the larger interest of customers, he stressed.
He said the management has sorted out shortage of single phase meters and 200kV transformers. “Rest of the material is fully available with the company,” he said and added that the tender process has been reduced to 75 days from earlier 120 days to expedite procurement. Earlier, Director Information Technology Imtiaz Rasool made a detailed briefing on salient features of the App.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021