Despite inflated bills, Minister claims energy sector faces Rs600 bln annual loss

Despite inflated power tariffs and the inclusion of taxes, Energy Minister Awais Leghari said that electricity theft was causing a loss of Rs 600 billion to the national exchequer annually.

“We have extra 6000-megawatt electricity on Saturday, despite demand we have not supplied, deliberately, because it does harm about Rs25 billion to nation treasury,” he said in an interview with A private news channel.

“If we are not providing electricity to the transformers, it is load shedding, but the demand is being witnessed at the transformers which have illegal connections (Kunda),” the minister added.

“We cannot provide electricity to those transformers because the consumers who are paying the bills will bear the burden."

“The federation has no charity money to give them who have illegal connections,” he clarified.

Leghari highlighted Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Balochistan were requested to control power theft, but on the other hand, Punjab’s Maryam Nawaz was assisting the centre without even any request. 

“Electricity theft causes a loss of Rs600 billion a year, but we would end this illegal power stealing and not bow down to political pressure or threats,” Laghari said.

According to the statistics shared by Leghari, electricity worth Rs137 billion is being stolen from Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) and tribal areas’ limits, Rs51 billion in Karachi, Rs133 billion in Punjab, and Rs100 billion in Balochistan.

The Energy Minister said the government stressed all chief ministers to address the issue of electricity theft to deal with the hours-long load-shedding problem.

'If they want to provide 24-hour electricity to the citizens, then our formula would provide better results,” he concluded.