ISLAMABAD, July 29: Even though the provinces are sticking to their stance of not allowing at-source deduction of electricity arrears from their share in the divisible pool, a meeting of the Council of Common Interests (CCI) has been convened on Wednesday to find a way to end the deadlock.

At a recent meeting of federal secretaries for finance and the Prime Minister’s Secretariat and provincial chief secretaries presided over by Prime Minister’s Special Assistant Dr Mussadik Malik, the provinces had insisted that the federal government and its distribution companies should improve their efficiency and reduce line losses instead of mixing up the functions of two constitutional forums — the CCI and the National Finance Commission (NFC) — for narrow objectives.

A senior government official said the provincial governments had suggested some changes in the energy policy and Dr Mussadik Malik promised to incorporate the suggestions into the policy to be presented to the CCI on Wednesday for approval. The meeting will be presided over by the prime minister.

The federal government suggested that 90 per cent of bills should be recovered through at-source deduction. It should be scaled down to 50pc and the rest adjusted against final reconciliation of dues.

“The provinces are not ready to allow any at-source deduction,” a provincial representative told Dawn. The provincial governments say that the responsibility of NFC is quite different from that of the CCI and as such the issue of electricity dues should not be discussed at the CCI level. Divisible pool transfers under the NFC are sacrosanct and protected by the constitution and, therefore, the government should not sow seeds of acrimony between the provinces and the centre.

The provinces said they did not oppose the action against gas and electricity theft but suggested to the federal government to seek independent legal opinion if punishments proposed in the act were in line with basic principles of jurisprudence. They are of the opinion that a maximum punishment of 14 years imprisonment and Rs10 million fine may create problems because with maximum imprisonment the amount of fine is usually kept nominal so that the period of imprisonment is not increased significantly in case of non-payment of the fine. The Sindh government urged the centre that while making a shift in energy mix from oil and gas to coal it should keep in mind that conversion of generation companies should be based on specifications of Thar coal because this resource of Sindh is going to play a key role in the shift.

The province was of the opinion that since 71pc of gas and almost 50pc of oil were produced by Sindh it made all the more sense to restrict specifications of generation companies to that of Thar coal so that coal-based generation became feasible for 20 years and beyond.