By Zahiruddin
CHITRAL: The sub-divisional officer of Peshawar Electric Supply Company (PESCO) Chitral, Samiullah Khan has said that 87 different cadres of posts are vacant in the office adversely affecting the quality of service delivery which ranged from breakdown recovery of transmission line to meter reading.
Talking in the ‘Mukha Mukh’ program of Chitral Press Club, he said that there were 21 sanctioned posts of meter readers out of which 17 were vacant due to which bills were sent to the consumers without meter reading which creates unrest among them who thronged to the PESCO offices complaining overbilling.
He said that all the 11 posts of bill distributors for 21000 consumers are vacant while the bills of an area are piled in a mosque from where the consumers collect their electricity bills and out of 41 posts of assistant lineman, 36 are vacant.
The PESCO officer said that the complaints of the consumers are on steep rise which resulted from the low number of staff in the office and the unavailability of technical facilities which included workshop for repair of transformers.
He said that the distribution transformers of different villages are obsolete and of low power which needed to be replaced by new ones while keeping in view the geography of the area, establishment of workshop for transformer repairs was inevitable here.
Mr. Khan said that the rate of line losses in the area was as high as 49 percent which included the pilferage of electricity which can be reduced once the required strength of field staff is provided.
He said that a large number of government departments are included the defaulters of electricity bills of the company whose recovery has been entrusted to the district administration.
He asked the consumers to contact him with their grievances before going to the consumer court where there hundreds of cases have been piled up against PESCO.
The leaders of civil society including Maulana Jamshed Ahmed, Engineer Fazle Rabbi Jan, Qari Jamal Abdul Nasir, Shabbir Ahmed Khan and the consumers were in attendance in large number.
