RAWALPINDI, Oct 22: Domestic consumers of electricity are no more exception as far as inflated bills are concerned, government departments too are being charged heavily by Islamabad Electric Supply Company (Iesco).

Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) managing-director Islamul Haq on Wednesday said the agency had received over Rs5 million inflated bill for the month of September terming the tariff as ‘blindly calculated’.

Talking to Dawn Mr Islam said the Iesco authorities were sending huge bills to, what he said, meet the revenue loss it was suffering as a result of 18-hour-long loadshedding.

Mr Islam said Wasa usually paid Rs10 million monthly to Iesco as energy bill for running over 260 tube wells, Rawal

Lake filtration plant and Khanpur Dam water filtration plant.

“Due to abrupt increase in electricity bills, we have to pay Rs15 million monthly instead of Rs10 million and we have conveyed our anger to Iesco in this regard but to no avail,” he said.

He said that despite increase in energy tariff, the civic agency had not enhanced its water bills for the consumers and hinted that if the Iesco continued to charge the Wasa extra, the civic agency would ultimately shift the burden to the consumers.

Besides apprising the provincial authorities about the increase, the civic agency has convened its officers meeting to discuss the situation.

About 40 per cent consumers do not pay water bills to

Wasa resulting in huge revenue losses to the water agency. The Punjab government would soon appoint a full time magistrate for recovering water bills from the defaulters.

Meanwhile, some domestic consumers complained that they had received inflated electricity bills despite 11-hour-long loadshedding.

“How can the energy bill of an ordinary house increase by more that Rs3,000 a month and that too when there is no electricity for the whole 11 to 13 hours a day? I have received Rs5,000 electricity bill for the month of September,” Hasina, a house wife who was arguing with the officials of Iesco Rawalpindi Cantonment Circle, told this reporter.

She said that meter reading of her house did not corroborate the units given in the bill calculated by the Iesco authorities.

Holding the bill in her hand, she refused to pay the energy tariff until the Iesco official correct the electric units and issues revised bill.

Commercial Officer Shahjahan Khan, however, said that since the electricity tariff had been increased so many times, the consumers were not used to new tariff and rejected the impression that Iesco was overcharging.