Lesco BoD reconstituted

LAHORE: The federal government has reconstituted the Lesco (Lahore Electric Supply Company) Board of Directors (BoD), sources said on Saturday.

According to a notification copy of which is available with The News, the 10-member reconstituted BoD now has six independent members from private sector and four government officials. It is a clear departure from previous routine when all the BoD members were nominated from the private sector, said sources.

The independent members of BoD are Brig (r) Badr-uz-Zaman, Tara Uzra Dawood, Abdul Qayyum Malik, Irfan Akram, Zafar Usmani and Nawaz Kasuri, while Punjab Energy Department secretary, a deputy secretary/ joint secretary/ additional secretary Ministry of Water and Power, a deputy secretary/ joint secretary/ additional secretary from Finance Division and the Lesco chief executive would represent the government.

The new members will elect their chairman from themselves in the upcoming meeting, it is learnt.

The sources said the Ministry of Water and Power had sent a summary about the proposed names to the PM Secretariat, which were notified following the approval granted by the prime minister.

Zafaryab Khan – spokesperson for Ministry of Water and Power – dispelled the impression that the previous BoD had been removed due to differences. “The new board has been constituted as previous board completed its tenure,” he said and added that the prime minister had approved the names.

In his comments, an outgoing board member, however, said. “The tenure, by law, is that of the board members,” he said and adding the board members of a public company served at the pleasure of the government/ministry. “So it is the prerogative of the ministry which they used.”

The previous board took numerous initiatives for streamlining the Lesco affairs, which is one of country’s biggest power utilities. Extra efforts were made for rectifying audit and accounts of the company and unearthing billions of rupees’ fraud, which led to reduction in losses.

It also unearthed several scams involving the company staff. One of these was the Phoolnagar fraud. The board also found illegalities in declaring profits of the company besides taking a decisive action on cartel and procurement issues. The introduction of a transparent billing system was another example.

A software for online monitoring of loadshedding was also introduced, making the affairs transparent and manageable.