PESHAWAR: The Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) recorded the highest line losses of Rs64 billion in the country last year, according to the power regulator.

The Performance Evaluation Report prepared by the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) for power distribution companies in the financial year 2021-22 has painted a damning picture of Pesco on most of the performance parameters, including transmission and dispatch losses, recovery percentage, safety, power interruptions, and loadshedding.

According to the report, Pesco hasmissedthe regulator’s target for transmission and dispatch losses by a massive 15pc.

During the year, the company’s transmission and dispatch losses remained 37.23pc against 21.33pc allowed by the regulator in the tariff determination.

Nepra also declares utility’s performance on power supply worst among Discos

The losses amount to Rs64 billion for the year, the highest among all Discos, according to the report.

The report said Pesco along with other distribution companies had failed to perform and contributed to a surge in the overall percentage of losses instead of improvement.

It pointed out that the collection of power bills was the most important factor for the increased electric supply and played a crucial role in the financial health of distribution companies.

Under the power regulator’s parameters, the distribution companies are encouraged to achieve 100 per cent recovery. However, Pesco’s recovery rate was over 92pc with the recovery target being missed by Rs18 billion.

Pesco was among the worst performers against the criteria of system average interruption frequency index (SAIFI), which is the average number of times that a customer experiences an outage during the year. Pesco’s reported SAIFI figure stood at 188.92 against 13 allowed by the power regulator and was highest among all distribution companies.

Similarly, the Pesco is on the top of the worst performing discos in the terms of the system average interruption duration index (SAIDI), which is the average total duration of the outages experienced by a consumer during a year.

The Pesco’s SAIDI figure stood over 14,518 minutes against 14 minutes allowed by the regulator.

Similarly, Pesco also witnessed on average daily load-shedding hours of six hours daily. However, the regulator cast doubts over the figures provided by the discos saying their figures were not based on ground realities.

In addition to this, the company was on top of the worst performers in terms of safety standards and faced a total of 39 fatal accidents involving 10 employees and 29 people.

Meanwhile, the Pesco sources told Dawn that major issues of the power utility were a huge area of jurisdiction, thin industrial base, political interference, political board of directors and chief executive officers and lack of modern human resource structure, staff shortage, militancy, and power theft.

They said the company had only 0.7pc industry out of its total consumers compared to the Gujranwala Electric Power Company, Faisalabad Electric Supply Company and Lahore Electric Supply Company.

The sources said the industry reduced loss figures dramatically in percentage terms.

They also said the company was a corporate entity on paper but followed the HR structure of ex-Wapda in 1958 style.

The sources said the Pesco was continuously expanding without proper planning with politicians deciding most of the issues.

Published in Dawn, January 22nd, 2023