he energy sector through the country is riddled with frequent power losses and the accompanying ills. But Lahore, despite being centrally located, and having full government writ, has proved even more inefficient in its electricity delivery operations. The city is condemned to put up with a frail power distribution infrastructure and flawed billing and recovery system.

The billing system of the Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO) offers no defence mechanism to consumers when it comes to unilaterally charging excessive units. In the whole scenario, it is the consumers who suffer — right from the time they receive inflated bills to submitting detection amounts that are several times their consumption of power.

Official data suggests that the practice of wrong billing continues during high-use as well as low-consumption months. The unusually cool temperatures this spring/ summer have also led to the menace of inflated electricity bills. Some of the consumers speak of having received bills that are 30 or so times their monthly consumption.

Abid Ali, a resident of Johar Town, says he recently received an electricity bill for Rs 62,000 which included detection bill arrears of Rs 60,000. He says he was asked to deposit at least Rs 40,000 if he wanted a review.

Interestingly, he wasn’t issued any notice of wrongdoing. “One fine morning, I came to know that I had to pay 30 times more than my usual monthly consumption of electricity — for the purported power theft. It’s pathetic that the LESCO acts as the accuser, the prosecutor, the witness and the judge when it comes to penalising the consumers. “There’s no respite for the consumers. They have to deposit the amount any way,” Ansari adds.

Another LESCO consumer says he was asked to pay “an extra Rs 49,000 against my monthly Rs 1,500 cost of energy, on account of a detection bill.”

If one is lucky, one might reach the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (or NEPRA) against wrong billing and get some relief too. Anwar ul Haq, who lives close to the Ferozpur Road, is one such consumer. According to the decision taken by the NEPRA on November 23, 2022, it was revealed that the said consumer had been unduly charged a detection bill of 22,280 units for a period of one year on the basis of 66.66 percent slowness of the energy meter. The authority also noted that if a meter did not record the actual use, it should be changed immediately or within two months’ time. In such a situation, the consumer will be charged for the slowness of the meter, for two previous billing cycles only.

In the whole scenario, it is the consumers who suffer — right from the time they receive inflated bills to submitting detection amounts that are several times their use of power.

The NEPRA also directed the LESCO to revise the detection bill from one year to two months’ consumption only and adjust the bill in the succeeding billing cycles. Furthermore, disciplinary action is to be taken against the concerned XEN and the SDO as per rules and reports submitted to the regulatory authority.

In the ongoing financial year, the NEPRA has grilled the LESCO for its failure to resolve the complaints by its consumers. These issues came up in an open kutchery held online by NEPRA Chairman Tauseef Farooqi. The LESCO chief executive officer took questions.

In its latest review report, titled Performance Evaluation Report of Distribution Companies for FY 2021-22, the NEPRA has observed that the LESCO had ‘topped’ all public-sector power utilities in terms of the number of consumer complaints it had received.

As per the report, the distribution company got 768,076 complaints during the financial year. This meant an increase of over 200,000 complaints compared to the previous year.

Moreover, the NEPRA found that upon recovery of billed amount, the LESCO had faltered majorly compared to other power distribution companies working in the Punjab province. With 97.1 percent recoveries against the previous year’s 98.72 percent, it had exhibited a downward trend in the FY 2021-22. In comparison, the recoveries by the GEPCO (Gujranwala), the FESCO (Faisalabad) and the MEPCO (Multan) exceeded 99 percent.

In terms of transmission and distribution losses too, the LESCO was found to have performed poorly.

In yet another blow to the credibility of the distribution company, the NEPRA found 5.39 faults per kilometer and declared the LESCO the worst electricity distributor in the country. (For the uninitiated, the fault rate is a key performance indicator.)

The abovementioned figures were compiled on the basis of data submitted by the DISCO managements.

This scribe reached out to LESCO officials but they weren’t available for comment.

The writer is a senior reporter at The News