PESHAWAR: During the ongoing campaign against electricity thieves, Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) has busted a gang, which was involved in tempering power meters by collecting a handsome amount from consumers in Mardan Circle. Pesco suspended five employees, who were part of this gang.
Usman Saleem, a spokesman of Pesco told this scribe on Sunday said Pesco task force in Mardan Circle with assistance of police department has been carrying out campaign against power thieves, resultantly arrested a gang, which involved in tempering power meters with support five employees of Pesco by taking money from consumers and inflicted huge financial losses national exchequer.
According to the issued an official communiqué, the offenders Noor Malik S/o Muhammad Qadar resident of Jalilabad and Siraj S/o Gul Maan Khan, Resident of Mausam Korano were allegedly involved tempering of power meters on taking handsome amounts from consumers and fostered the illegal act like power theft.
Apart from that, five employees of Pesco were also involved in this gang and promoting power meter tampering and they were suspended immediately following the directives of Pesco CEO Qazi Muhammad Tahir and initiated action against them.
The Pesco spokesman said gadgets and instruments that were used in tempering of power meters were also recovered from possession of the culprits and a case was registered against them. Further interrogation has been initiated into the case to catch up more people involved in this gang.
On the other hand, following the instructions of Secretary Energy, CEO Pesco Qazi Muhammad Tahir has issued special orders to make the urban areas of Mardan load-shedding free in the next 10 days. For this purpose CEO Pesco has assigned special duty to two additional Chief Engineers and two directors and issued orders to them to utilize all resources. Mardan Urban Area is to be made load shedding free.
According to the post issued, Pesco Task Force teams will recover from all the defaulters in Mardan and along with this the losses will be controlled by eliminating electricity theft and meter tampering. The operation in this regard is going on and arrears of more than one crore were collected in Mardan yesterday and 57 FIRs have been registered.
The Pesco chief said that load shedding free Mardan will be presented as a model and by adopting the same strategy it will be possible to end load shedding in the rest of the region of Pesco.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023