ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Power Division Sardar Awais Ahemd Khan Legahri has directed the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of all Distribution Companies (DISCOs) to clear the backlog of all the pending faulty meters in their respective areas by March 31.

He further directed to adopt the new procedure for new connection based on consumer facilitation associated with application tracking system must be brought in practice from March 15, 2018, said a statement issued here Tuesday.

He further directed that the old system of application would no longer be used after the March 15 deadline.

The directions were passed in a review of progress with meeting attended by the Secretary Power Division, CEOs of all the distribution companies, MD PEPCO and officials of Power Division here.

As per the new application for new electricity connection, the time for installation of the electricity meter has been drastically reduced from the current two to four months.

Besides the consumers will also have access to the status of their application via the online facilities.

The Federal Minister also directed the CEOs to hire the services of best financial managers for improvement of the financial health of their respective companies.

He said that the financial management of the companies is the one of the key factor and it needs expert level handling.

Sardar Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari directed the CEOs to carefully study the existing rules and regulations relating to tariff implementation at the DISCOs level so that the technical losses due to tariff are eliminated by the end of March this year.

He also directed the DISCOs to start exercise as per the existing set of rules and procedure for application necessary for tariff for the next year so that the gap between recovery and energy sold may be minimized.

The Federal Minister further directed to maximize efforts for ensuring 100% mobile meter reading.

He expressed satisfaction over the increase in the mobile meter reading.

The meeting took stock of the DISCOs performance for the month of January 2018. Various Key Performance Indicators based targets were discussed during the meeting.