Sidelined: NAB stopped from chasing down electricity bill defaulters

[Devil Soul]

Sidelined: NAB stopped from chasing down electricity bill defaulters
By Asad Kharal
Published: February 3, 2014

LAHORE:
A move to enlist the corruption watchdog’s help to recover electricity bills from top defaulters has backfired after some dignitaries were found involved in power theft. Subsequently, the government and power utilities have stripped the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) of its recovery powers.

The Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) through a notification has withdrawn bill recovery powers from the NAB. Earlier, the water and power ministry and some power utility companies had also barred NAB from recovery.

The recovery of over Rs74 billion from more than 50,000 electricity bill defaulters could halt because powerful lobbies have succeeded in secluding NAB from the recovery drive, sources familiar with the matter told The Express Tribune. The move was expected to improve the liquidity position of the power sector.

The water and power ministry vide its letter dated March 8, 2013 had asked NAB to assist in recovering overdue bills from defaulters amounting to Rs112 billion.

However, as the NAB progressed in its recovery drive, it stepped on the wrong toes and also discovered wrongdoings in distribution companies (Discos), sources said.

NAB found glaring discrepancies such as excess and fake billing, bills issued without meter readings, bills without names of consumers and address of the connections, they said.

The bureau has recovered Rs1.93 billion from 12,908 electricity bill defaulters, despite the problems in the authenticity of bill defaulters’ lists provided to the bureau by Discos, a senior official of NAB familiar with the matter told The Express Tribune said.

He said the figures of 126,000 electricity defaulters and unpaid bills of Rs112 billion provided by the water and power ministry were exaggerated. The lists provided later by the Discos reduced the amount to Rs76.90 billion from Rs112 billion and electricity defaulters to 63,254 defaulters from 126,000.

Now that the country’s apex anti-corruption body has been barred from this recovery, he asked how “could the distribution companies expect to recover this huge amount from defaulters”.

Sources familiar with the matter said the NAB was separated from the recovery drive because the defaulters also included some influential dignitaries, which could have caused embarrassment for the government.

The pressure on the corruption watchdog was such that it could only recover less than Rs2 billion from electricity defaulters.

These defaulters can get clean bill from the respective electric supply companies due to their influence, because now these companies have withdrawn their request from NAB which was actively pursuing this matter, a senior NAB official stated.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 3rd, 2014.

 

[AhsanAmin]

The Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) through a notification has withdrawn bill recovery powers from the NAB. Earlier, the water and power ministry and some power utility companies had also barred NAB from recovery.

Seems strange. I wish the new CJ, following the lines of Iftikhar Chaudhary, takes suo moto notice of this and asks water and power minsitry to explain the reasons behind this or take actions to reverse this decision.

Seemingly, there was a lot of effort made by the new government to stop electricity and theft of other utilities and they informed public about new laws that would take strict action against those people who swindle the national exchequer and utility companies. CM Punjab also took some action and himself accompanied an operation that exposed utilities theft at some industrial unit. The new actions, however, seem to be totally opposite to the spirit of those new laws and previous actions and cast some doubt on the honesty of previous actions and good intentions of the new government.

NAB is also known to insiders as being very corrupt at times, and since they get to know about crimes of people, I know sometimes corrupt officials there are known to blackmail utilities thieves to extort money for themselves.

Just to make the readers laugh but it might actually be practical, I think this should go both ways, if utilities thieves expose NAB blackmailers first with some proof, they should be granted impunity, and if the good NAB officials expose the utilities thieves without any corruption, they get some recognition.

And all political parties should have a mandatory clause stipulated by law that says that if any of their member is found guilty of stealing any utilities, bribery or other similar wrongdoing, they would be stripped of the party membership forever. If we are too concerned with widespread nature of this crime in our country, we might ask this law to be valid in the future and not on past actions, and that might let good politicians implement it without staunch opposition and red tape from those powerful people who have already committed this crime in the past. At least better future is better than something that will just encourage us to keep on committing old crimes.