LAHORE, Sep 7: The Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) earned only Rs169 billion during the last fiscal year (2002-03) as against its claim of Rs216 billion.

According to Wapda’s own ‘Progress Report’ for the last fiscal, issued by its Statistical Division last week, the authority collected Rs199.7 billion against the total billing of Rs211.5 billion, at a percentage of 94.4.

The collection of Rs199.7 billion includes electricity duty, general sales tax and withholding tax amounting to Rs30.7 billion, which will be going to the federal and provincial governments, leaving the authority with a Rs169 billion income.

The authority chairman, in his news conferences, and advertisements before the opening of the Ghazi Brotha power project last month, had put the income at Rs216billion.

According to the progress report, the line losses also remained stubbornly high during the year. The auxiliary losses remained static at around 2.1 per cent, transmission losses at 7.8 per cent as against 7.7 per cent last year and distribution losses at 16.5 per cent as against 16.4 per cent last year, bringing the total line losses to 26.4 per cent.

The Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (Hesco) remained the ‘worst offender’ with 34.9 per cent losses as far as the distribution is concerned. It is followed by the Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) at 32 per cent and the Quetta Electric Supply Company (Qesco) at 18.7 per cent.

Interestingly, Fata registered 13.2 per cent losses where Wapda has no metering, reading and bill collection system and claims around 100 per cent arrears.

According to the report, Wapda receivables also increased by Rs12.247 during the year. It started the year with an outstanding amount of Rs46.469 billion which cumulated to Rs58.716 billion by the year-end — an increase of Rs12.247 billion. Public-sector default continued to haunt the authority with an increase of Rs9.301 billion and private sector arrears increasing by Rs2.835 billion.

About the health of Wapda’s system, the report says the number of minor trippings (of below 20 minutes) went up to a whopping 509,884 this year as against 466,530 last year. The Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) remained on top with 168,212 trippings as against 152,512 last year.

Major trippings also registered a substantial increase, with their number totalling 59,718 as against 49,548 last year. Hesco was the main contributor with 18,099 major trippings.

During the last year, 586 transformers were damaged. Such cases went up to 670 this year.

The system’s poor health is also reflected in the number of deaths reported during the year. As many as 65 Wapda employees died and 101 suffered non-fatal injuries. Some 155 non-Wapda people died and 37 sustained injuries.

According to the progress report, the authority provided 497,092 domestic connections against a target of 485,000. It also gave 63,824 commercial connections against a target of 60,000.