Moinuddin, a 26-year-old civil engineer, was due to leave for Dubai in five days when he was electrocuted and killed while installing his meter on an electricity pylon near his house in Bobai village, on the outskirts of Bisham tehsil in Shangla.

According to the FIR filed by Moinuddin’s family following his death, the reason he was installing the meter himself was because the two Peshawar Electricity Supply Company (Pesco) linesmen responsible for carrying out this job refused to do so, arguing that the compensation being provided by the family was not sufficient enough.

Moinuddin’s body was taken to the THQ [Taluka Headquarters] Hospital in Bisham, where doctors declared him dead. Moinuddin’s family took back the body and staged a protest on the Karakoram Highway, demanding action against the Pesco employees that had refused to reinstall the meter despite receiving cash payments for arrears from the deceased’s family. A report was then initiated at the police station Bisham under Section 174 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The police have completed their findings and submitted their recommendations to the district prosecutor’s office.

This incident, however, is not an anomaly.

A LITANY OF COMPLAINTS

Pesco consumers in Shangla, Battagram and Kohistan have been facing many issues due to such malpractices on the part of Pesco employees. Three people have died in Chakisar over the last 10 years because Pesco avoids repairing and maintaining its electric equipment in the area.

The Peshawar Electricity Supply Company’s malpractices have caused a great deal of financial and mental stress to hapless consumers who have to grapple with inflated bills and poor services

Pesco consumers have to repair their transformers and power supply lines themselves and, in some cases, they even pay Pesco linesmen and private technicians for the removal and reinstallation of transformers.

Habibun Nijar, a Pesco domestic consumer in Bisham Maira, tells Eos that he has never seen any meter-reader note the consumed units of his meter, due to which he always receives inflated bills. To make the corrections, he has to visit Pesco’s Bisham office, spending Rs 3,000 on fuel each time in order to do so.

He says every domestic consumer receives the same bill, even if one has consumed 30 units and the other has used 600 units, because there is no check and balance, and most consumers are defaulters because of overbilling and faulty meters.

Rehmatullah, a resident of Shang, reveals that, despite not being trained, he had to remove and reinstall transformer links in his village because Pesco did not carry out the repair work. Hayat Khan, a businessman in the same region, says Pesco does not follow any rules. According to him, they even ask consumers to pay cash directly to the linesmen for the new connection. Hayat says he paid Rs 9,000 for his new meter, even though the cost of a new meter at the time was Rs 4,400.

A senior official at Pesco acknowledges the problems. On the condition of anonymity, he reveals that Pesco gets a monthly bill for received units from the grid stations, which they tally with the registered consumers, but that number always turns out to be higher than what is consumed by the customers. This is why they put the units mostly into domestic consumers’ bills in order to fix the difference, and save themselves from having to explain to Pesco headquarters about the monthly losses.

He says power supply lines, transformers, crossings and other installed accessories are rusted and damaged and, despite repeated requests, Pesco headquarters does not respond. He further adds, “These accessories are causing a lot of losses, the burden of which is put on the consumers.”

The Pesco official says that the government initiated a crackdown against electricity theft in the country on September 7, but the task force has not been deployed in Shangla yet, which is the most defaulting district in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

THE HIGHEST DEFAULTING DISTRICT

Pesco’s Shangla division, including Kohistan, has 17,842 consumers — 17,257 domestic and 585 commercial — and collectively they owe Rs 3,248,969,109 in accumulated electricity charges. Of this sum, domestic customers owe Rs 3,197,106,052 and Rs 51,863, 057 is outstanding with commercial consumers. Consumers in Bisham tehsil and its adjacent areas suffered the most due to Pesco’s malpractices when it was the part of Hazara division circle.

Pesco officials and consumers claim that, before the charge of the Bisham sub-office was handed over to Swat, the situation was at its worst. They claim illegal direct connections were given to the consumers at that time, for which Pesco officials used to receive monthly payments. Fake bogus meters were even installed, for which consumers did not receive bills for years.

Nawab Khan, a commercial consumer, says he applied for a connection in March 2019 and his meter was installed after two months but, despite his repeated requests and complaints to Pesco authorities, he never received a bill. He finally received a huge bill three years later, in December 2022. Pesco officials then started forcing him to pay the amount at once. He says he was unable to pay the total arrears in one go because his business had been badly impacted by Covid-19.

Many others have similar stories

Gulbar Khan, an elderly resident of Chakisar tehsil in Shangla, says that, after establishing an alternative connection with a local mini-power station, he submitted an application in the Pesco office to disconnect his Pesco connection and handed over the meter to them. He was shocked when a Pesco team later came to his home with a bill of Rs 350,000.

Haider Ali, an activist in Chakisar, tells Eos that Pesco sends inflated bills, instals faulty meters and has not established any complaint centre in their office, due to which they do all their electricity-related work on a self-help basis. He says Shangla is the only district where meter-reading is not carried out and Pesco puts units of their own choice on the bill.

Similarly, Mufti Zubair’s house meter was burned and Pesco officials asked him to pay Rs 5,000 to change it, although the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) rules state that, if consumers are not satisfied with their meter, the distribution company must change them within one or two monthly cycles. For that, they are supposed to charge Rs 500 in their next bill.

ISSUES OF POWER

Zohaib Ahmad is a resident of Chakisar and conducted an assessment about the main electricity issues in his tehsil and proposed a plan to address them. In his comprehensive study, he highlighted the issues: overbilling without meter-reading, unscheduled load-shedding, and the self-maintenance and repair of transmission lines. The latter, in particular, creates inefficiencies and safety hazards, as untrained individuals perform repairs and maintenance tasks.

His assessment also highlighted a lack of human resources in Pesco offices: 80 percent of positions are vacant in each sub-division of the district, and this has resulted in financial burdens and a lack of trust in the electricity billing system.

Pesco disregards Nepra rules and guidelines in these parts of the province. For example, distribution companies or Discos must replace a transformer within hours if it is damaged, and even have to provide emergency transformers in the interim. But the reality is that consumers are often in the dark and businesses are closed for weeks, waiting for transformers. A senior Pesco official claims bogus, tampered meters are still installed in the Bisham circle and blames the local political leadership for their involvement in these malpractices.

During the task force campaigns in other parts of the country, consumers complained to the Nepra teams, which issued an inquiry report on December 4, 2023 claiming power firms were bleeding users dry through inflated bills and malpractice.

Nepra’s inquiry reveals that “not a single” distribution company was carrying out correct billing and over 13 million consumers had been charged for more than 30 days of electricity usage and 0.4 million were sent ‘average’ bills due to faulty meters. The inquiry was launched after consumers from all across the country complained of “excessive, inflated and wrong bills” charged by Pesco in July and August 2023.

The inquiry report noted that a total of 492,478 defective meters were in need of replacement by the end of August 2023. These meters had been defective from between two months to more than three years. In the report, the regulator recommended legal action against all Discos for violating regulations.

Meanwhile, Pesco consumers in North-KP, Shangla, Kohistan, Battagram and Torghar say they are ready to pay power bills but want the services as they are provided in the major cities and also proper meter-reading.

Pesco consumers also told Eos they want to see legal action taken against those previous Pesco officers who cheated them by installing bogus meters and for receiving payments for meters but installing direct connections while saying their meter would be installed later.

Eos made several attempts over two months to contact Pesco Shangla Executive Engineer Muhammad Zakria and Pesco Headquarters Public Relations Officer Usman Saleem. We shared questions with them regarding this story, but they did not respond to the questions despite repeated requests, calls and messages.

The writer is a journalist based in Shangla. X: @Umar_Shangla

Published in Dawn, EOS, December 17th, 2023