Peshawar to be made loadshedding-free city, meeting told

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has decided to make the provincial capital as loadshedding-free model city after Mardan district, a meeting was told on Friday.

The fourth meeting of the Provincial Task Force for Energy was held under the chairmanship of Additional Chief Secretary Finance and Tribal Affairs Muhammad Abid Majeed. Secretary Energy and Power Nisar Ahmed Khan, all divisional commissioners, regional police officers, chief executive PESCO and others attended the meeting, said an official communique. The meeting was told that a plan had been drawn up to speed up the recovery of dues from defaulting electricity consumers and to stop the misuse of electricity in Peshawar city.

“Necessary instructions have been issued to the district administration, police officials and PESCO operational teams across the province,” an official said, adding that it has also been decided to speed up the process to install meters in the areas deprived of the facility of electricity.

It was informed that in a short period of one and a half month, the provincial task force had so far recovered more than Rs2.5 from the bill paying consumers, and more than 28000 illegal connections have been disconnected by imposing fines.

More than 17,000 raids were conducted in different areas, cases were registered against 10,000 people and 650 accused were arrested, it was informed. The head of provincial task force, Abid Majeed, expressed his satisfaction over the measures taken for the recovery of dues and stopping of electricity theft in Mardan district. He congratulated all stakeholders of the task force on this achievement.

He further said that on the instructions of the caretaker chief minister and chief secretary, work had been started on making Peshawar district a loadshedding free city. He issued necessary instructions to achieve the set target by forming teams to Peshawar through PESCO chief, police officials along with the commissioner.

The task force chief directed the PESCO chief to intensify the campaign against power theft in illegal housing societies and industrial areas so that the big fish can be caught as a lesson.He urged all the officers to speed up operations against mafias to remove the impression among the public that only poor electricity consumers were being operated.