PITC, Discos question Nepra report on excessive billing

ISLAMABAD: The Power Information Technology Company (PITC) and power distribution companies (DISCOs) have raised doubts about the accuracy of a recent report by the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra).

Nepra initiated an inquiry and held a public hearing with CEOs of power distribution companies in response to numerous complaints about excessive, inflated and inaccurate billings during July and August 2023.

After an investigation, the power regulatory authority released a report on December 4, 2023, disclosing significant and intentional pattern of deceptive meter reading and billing practices by DISCOS in the July-August 2023 bills, purportedly to defraud millions of consumers.

Responding to the report, PITC stated Nepra used wrong data, and made such assessments, which are far from reality, according to the initial response on the report by PITC, which is available to The News.

It mentioned problems as to how Nepra checked the quality of the data and made calculations. It argued that Nepra’s criteria of randomly picking samples for the report was unfair and might make the whole thing unreliable.

It added that Nepra didn’t take into consideration weekends and holidays, while looking at the electricity distribution business, putting a question mark on the accuracy of the conclusion.

PITC also criticized the report for failing to check the data thoroughly, and failing to apply multiple methods to verify the findings, adding Nepra focused too much on billing while missing the bigger picture.

Following the Nepra’s report about high billing by electricity companies, the Ministry of Energy (Power Division) came up with a plan. The electricity companies (DISCOs) had to check and share their thoughts on the report. An independent committee was also formed to review Nepra’s findings. The ministry will wait for the committee’s full report before making a final decision on the matter.

DISCOs and PITC checked Nepra’s work and gave their thoughts. They disagree with Nepra’s stats for July and August 2023. The power regulatory authority said around 76 percent consumers were billed on time by their respective distribution companies.

But PITC and DISCOs claimed that Nepra used wrong data, and holidays were not considered, adding that around 98 percent consumers got their bills on time.

In its report, Nepra also said about 3.2 million consumers were affected in July 2023 due to changes in billing slabs, status changes from protected to non-protected, and status changes from life-line to non-life line. However, the actual data shows that only around 0.8 million consumers were impacted in the same categories. This means that the statistics provided by Nepra were exaggerated by approximately 300 percent.

Based on a preliminary analysis, it was found that the combined impact of changes in billing slabs and category changes is about 0.3 percent of the total billing for the two months (July 2023 and August 2023).

PITC also mentioned a flaw in Nepra’s report about meters as the Nepra claimed there were 381,510 defective meters mostly from MEPCO and LESCO. But PITC said there was an error in calculating the numbers of meters on the part of the power regulatory authority.