Ministry of Water and Power has suspended Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Sukkar Electric Supply Company (SEPCO), Farman Ullah Khan and Director Commercial for inefficiency and failure to achieve targets for improvement in recovery and controlling losses. An official announcement from the Ministry of Water and Power also claimed that CEO failed in bringing down duration of loadshedding in the areas of SEPCO.
Opposition leaders in the National Assembly, Syed Khurshid Ahmad Shah who also hails from Sukkar on Thursday criticised the government in the presence of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on prolonged loadshedding in rural areas. According to the latest figures an increase of Rs 425.90 million has been registered against private defaulters during March 2015 and April 2015. Similarly the recovery percentage also remains considerably lower than the assigned target of 100 percent and the transmission and distribution losses also remained higher than the Nepra permitted targets.
Chief Executive Officer MEPCO, Muzaffar Abbasi has been given additional charge of SEPCO with targets to bring in improvements in recovery, reducing line losses and taking effective measures against electricity theft. Ministry of Water and Power also claimed that the government has been following uniform policy of distribution of electricity in the entire country based on percentage of losses on feeders.
Ministry of Water and Power is facing criticism from the Prime Minister, Finance Ministry and international financial institutions for not improving recovery. A number of efforts were made through National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to recover the defaulted amount from the private sector but all such efforts have not borne any fruit.