Daily Times

Sir: Recently, my family began working to build a new home and tear down our old one. We are a middleclass family and coming to the decision of doing this was not easy for us. Everything was going well, but then K-Electric happened.

We were told that we would not be able to begin construction till such point that the metre measuring electricity use was moved. When we placed an application — more than six months ago — we were given no definitive answer.

Regular visits to the office resulted in no speedy resolution of the problem. Eventually, a K-Electric representative told us that the task was “impossible”. I want you to remember the word because it will return in this story.

After this, a few weeks passed and a K-Electric vehicle showed up, with their representatives in uniform. The man driving the vehicle told us that he could get the job done, but we would have to pay the fee for the new metre he had to install. Despite being shocked that the man had showed up after we were told the task was not possible, we thought it was better than delaying construction for another six months. We readily got the metre changed and construction was on its way.

Fast forward to this week when we get a notice in the mail that the metre has been changed and we owe the company Rs. 8000. We were communicated nothing apart from the fact that the task as “impossible” by the K-Electric people. Finding out that there was an additional Rs. 8,000 due after a representative had already taken Rs. 10,000 from us was not only shocking but worrying.

When we visited the office, another representative looked up our case and on the screen I saw that the task was still marked “impossible”. Apparently, we were being charged additional money because the company had done a survey and seen that a change had already been made. When we mentioned the money we had already paid we were told we should have made a video of the man asking for the money and that he was not associated with K-Election.

Can anyone explain to me how this can happen? Someone with the official car, and uniform, shows up and changes one metre to another that is officially issued by the company. The company tells us it doesn’t know who the man is, BUT wants to charge us for the changed metre anyway?

When we argued with the representative he said that people get charged Rs. 20,000 for the same job and we should be lucky the charge was only Rs. 8000 (without counting the Rs. 10,000 we had already paid). Can someone in K-Electric explain how something that costs Rs. 20,000 can magically turn into Rs. 8,000 on its own?

I firmly believe that anytime an application is placed K-Electric employees check the records, go and make a fool out of the desperate person who needs to get their metre changed, and then the company — which maintains that something is “impossible” — sends people a bill for the work they didn’t do and don’t want to own.

This is the life of an average Pakistani. We are constantly waiting to be duped and robbed. But who cares? Reham Khan wrote a book and we’d rather spend days talking about that than addressing serious, real issues.

ALI ZAHID

Karachi

Published in Daily Times, June 24^th 2018.