PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government and Peshawar Electric Supply Company on Saturday agreed there would be no unscheduled loadshedding in the province in future.

They decided they would mutually finalise the loadshedding schedule and the Pesco would ensure complete compliance with it.

The government and Pesco also agreed the areas, where the rate of utility bill recovery was more than 70 per cent, would be exempted from outages.

Govt, Pesco agree to exempt areas with over 70% bill recovery from loadshedding

The agreement came during a meeting chaired by Chief Minister Pervez Khattak here at the Wapda House to discuss the overall power supply situation in the province.

KP Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser, local government minister Inayatullah Khan, Strategic Support Unit chairman Sahibzada Saeed, energy and power secretary Naveed Khan, chairman of the Pesco board of directors Malik Asad, Pesco chief executive Anwarul Haq Yousafzai and other officials attended the meeting, said a statement issued here.

Expressing reservations about the unscheduled, prolonged loadshedding, the CM asked the Pesco bosses to ensure full utilisation of the electricity quota of the province and control power outages to provide relief to the people.

He expressed concern about the unscheduled loadshedding in the province and declared it injustice with the people.

Mr. Khattak directed the Pesco authorities to ensure efficient utilisation of 13.5 per cent allocated quota of electricity of the province.

He assured the Pesco high-ups of full cooperation on part of the government in controlling illegal connections and ensuring recovery to get rid of loadshedding.

The CM ordered the formation of committees at district level to check irregularities in power distribution and speed up arrear recovery.

He suggested the launch of a joint awareness campaign by the Pesco and provincial government for judicious utilisation of electricity.

Mr. Khattak asked the Pesco officials to take action against the employees involved in irregularities and creating problems both for public and the company.

He also ordered the formulation of a proper schedule for avoiding unnecessary delay in electrification of various localities of the province.

The participants decided that action would be taken against all those involved in power theft.

They also agreed to hold another meeting very soon on the matter.

Earlier, Pesco authorities briefed the chief minister about electricity utilisation, problems confronted by the relevant staff in controlling illegal use of power, and steps being taken for improvement of the system.

The officials said an effective plan had been made to solve the problems of low voltage in the province.

The Pesco officials agreed they would install a monitoring system showing real-time data on power generation and utilisation and that the data would be shared with the provincial government.

They said the open trading system was being adopted to remove irregularities and delay in repairs of inoperative transformers.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2016