In order to take more effective action against power theft, Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) has started a survey to get latest and updated data of its consumers especially industrial, commercial and large domestic consumers.
The survey was started on the directions of Chief Executive Lesco who is supervising the teams directly and monitoring the daily activity. Under this survey the teams will update the data of consumers such as sanctioned and present load, status of meter and etc. By law every consumer is bound to notify Lesco about increase in its load but unfortunately here in Pakistan this law is not followed.
A senior Lesco official said that all superintending engineers and executive engineers are involved in this activity and carrying out this survey in their respective jurisdictions. The practice once completed will give the company true picture of its consumers, official added.
On the other hand, Lesco continued its anti-power theft campaign and since June 28, 2013 till now the company recovered around Rs 110 million from over 284 power pilferers. Available data of anti-power theft campaign revealed that so far most power pilferage was detected in northern circle (Badami Bagh, Ravi Road and etc localities) where Lesco officials detected 135 cases, registered 10 FIRs and 23170 units were billed to power thieves.
Second was the Central Circle (Iqbal Town and etc) where officials detected 21 cases, registered 8 FIRs and 27281 units were billed to power thieves. Third was Eastern Circle (Shadman and etc) where 11 cases were detected, 5 FIRs were lodged and 2240 units were billed.
Though the Southern Circle (Defence) remained lowest in numbers of power theft incidents but it stood first in recovery of stolen units. Here only six cases were detected but the units billed to those thieves were 141,378. Lesco officials said involvement of police and FIA in the campaign along with Lesco has forced many power thieves to shut down their activities while general public is also avoiding any such practices, which they could adopt in this season.