KOHAT: Irked by unannounced loadshedding, district development advisory committee chairman MPA Ziaullah Bangash has asked the people not to pay electricity bills unless Pesco issued loadshedding schedule and stopped over-billing.

Accompanied by elders of different areas the lawmaker on Friday visited the cantonment police station and got registered a case against the Pesco officials, including executive engineer, SDO and line superintendent, for ‘carrying out loadshedding on their own’.

Mr Bangash told police that Pesco officials had allegedly set up main switch at the old bus stand to carry out loadshedding whenever they wished.

He said that the people had had power supply only for two hours daily, but despite that they were sent exaggerated bills.

Blame them for unscheduled outages and over-billing

He held the three Pesco officials responsible for the mess.

The PTI lawmaker gave a week’s deadline to the officials to mend their ways or the people would stop paying bills.

Mr Bangash said that due to low voltage even fans could not run, causing hardships to people, particularly children and elderly in the scorching heat.

The PTI lawmaker demanded of the provincial government to take action against meter readers for being involved in power theft and over billing.

He regretted that Wapda senior officials were afraid of lower staff especially meter readers.

He claimed that installation of a meter cost Rs6,500 in Kohat as opposed to its legal rate of Rs3,300. Similarly, he said that line superintendent didn’t provide wire to the consumers for fixing faults and people had to purchase the same from market.

Meanwhile, elders of Ustarzai also filed a case against the Pesco executive engineers of Kohat and Hangu districts at the local police station on Friday, for carrying out unscheduled power outages.

On the other hand, Pesco staff continued its drive against power theft and cut off supply to various villages on Friday.

Power supply was suspended to areas in Kahi and Khusari Banda.

Pesco staff also got registered cases in the Thall police station against the power thieves.

VEENA MALIK, OTHERS BOOKED: A case was registered against Veena Malik and six other people, including her husband, Asad Bashir, for being part of a blasphemous programme aired on GEO TV.

The case was lodged in Riaz Shaheed police station against Veena Malik, her husband, Asad Bashir, programme anchor Shaista Wahidi, programme producer and the media group’s owner Mir Shakilur Rehman.

A local man, Syed Mudassar Pirzada had earlier approached the additional district and sessions judge, pleading that the case be registered against the persons for allegedly involved in blasphemy.

The court had directed the police to book the said persons.

Published in Dawn, June 14th, 2014