HYDERABAD, Sept 10: The district council in its session on Monday took a united stand against the Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (Hesco) and urged the Sindh government to take notice of growing complaints about the power utility issuing detection bills and carrying out unannounced load-shedding, and take up the matter with Wapda authorities.

The session made the recommendation after Nasir Baloch tabled a resolution on detection bills and load-shedding. The members said that the issuance of detection bills had become a perennial problem while Hesco officials often appeared least concerned about the trouble they had put people in.

Mr Baloch said that with the onset of Ramazan Hesco should be urged to avoid load-shedding and stop issuing detection bills. Power consumers had to run from pillar to post to get the bills rectified while the officials concerned remained absent from offices.

His contention drew support from Mohammad Ashraf, Mohammad Aslam, Munawar Khan Zai, Isthiaq Ahmed and a number of other members. They said that officials, metre readers and line superintendents were amassing wealth by pilfering power. A formula had been decided once for issuing a detection bill but it was not being followed, they complained.

They said that the consumers had to pay the inflated bills to get power restored after the company had seen to it that their efforts to get it corrected had fallen through.

Mohammad Aslam said that the procedure laid down for issuing detection bills required witnesses to verify that the metre had been tempered with but the Hesco officials did not take any witness with them when they carried out raids.

He said that people who were using air conditioners in the city received nominal bills while those who had only water pumping machines were getting detection bills.

Yusuf Rajput singled SDO of Liaquat Colony for criticism and said that the official took undue advantage of his purported relationship with a high official.

Mehboob Abro and Sajida Baloch said that executive engineers were not authorised to correct bills beyond Rs10,000 while the superintending engineers who had the power to rectify bills exceeding Rs10,000 remained absent from office.

They said that poles of high tension transmission lines erected along the main Wadhu Wah Road had so far claimed three lives. There was lack of coordination between Hesco and district governments, they said.

They claimed that a federal minister’s influence was at work when power supply in Hyderabad was disrupted to provide electricity to Dadu through Hala grid station following fire in Dadu grid station.

Pervez Ranjha and Yamin Soomro said that 80 per cent of bills issued to the residents of Doomrah Goth, Sheedi Goth and Latifabad Colony were inflated.

Hesco XEN of Latifabad, Asadullah Memon, who attended the session, admitted that power supply did disrupt when electricity was provided to Dadu from Hyderabad but it was normalised after a transformer arrived from Lahore.

“We have to face threatening attitude of power consumers. They throw bricks and bamboos at us when we get at some place to rectify a fault,” he complained. The XEN, however, assured the session that members’ problems would be solved.

Hussain Bux Hussaini and Abbas Khan said that company always restored power supply after people resorted to agitation. “When consumers burnt furniture or ransacked Wapda office electricity was immediately restored,” said Mr Khan, adding, that it appeared it was the only language which the Hesco officials understood.

The chair adjourned the session till Tuesday.

The convenor had directed the DPO on Saturday to attend the session but he did not turn up, neither any member drew the chair’s attention towards his absence.