Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) has said that the duration of load-shedding has been decreased in FY 2019-20 as compared to previous years, but it can be eliminated if the distribution companies (DISCOs) avail 100 percent of their allocated quota of power.

According to Performance Evaluation Report for Year 2019-20 issued by the regulator, the Authority has serious reservations over the authenticity of data regarding load shedding being carried out by DISCOs in their service territories. It also came to the knowledge of NEPRA that DISCOs are carrying out load management as per AT&C losses criteria. It was noted with concern that in FY 2019-20, no any noticeable improvement in the performance of DISCOs has been observed, the report said. It has been noted with serious concern that during FY 2019- 20, DISCOs contributed loss of around Rs. 59 billion due to their inefficiency in Transmission and Distribution (T&D) losses and Rs. 160 billion in recovery. The reported figures of T&D losses indicate that except GEPCO and FESCO, none of the DISCO could meet the regulator’s expectations. Although all DISCOs could not achieve the figure of 100 percent recovery but, LESCO, GEPCO, MEPCO, FESCO, K-Electric and IESCO have shown their recoveries more than 90 percent, the report said. The report said that around 160 fatal accidents of employees and public occurred in year 2019-20. NEPRA Authority took serious notice and decided to conduct investigations under Section 27A of the NEPRA Act.

Accordingly, investigations against K-Electric, PESCO, HESCO, SEPCO and FESCO have been conducted, whereas, remaining DISCOs were also in plan. NEPRA has initiated the efforts to move DISCOs towards the adoption of Advanced Meter Infrastructure/ Automatic Meter Reading system and K-Electric is taking lead as compared to all other DISCOs.