The Punjab government has launched campaign against the pilferers of electricity and gas in the province. Initially, major thrust of the drive is in eight big cities where major industry is situated. This campaign has been launched under the aegis of a taskforce on eradication of electricity and gas theft constituted by the chief minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif on June 27. Provincial secretary industries Irfan Ali has been made incharge of this taskforce. The basic purpose of this taskforce is the elimination of gas and electricity theft by big industrial and commercial units. Since its inception, the taskforce has conducted constant raids on big units in industrial cities and has given a strong message to the pilferers that long arm of the law is close to their necks.
After the launch of this campaign, the SNGPL has detected 34 cases of gas pilferage with the assistance of taskforce in different regions of Punjab. The total volume of pilfered gas is estimated to be 1571 million cubic feet while the amount of pilfered gas is Rs. 754.51 million. 21 raids have been jointly conducted by sui gas and Lahore city district government’s teams in the provincial metropolis till June 17th. As many as 14 FIRs have been registered against the accused as a result of these raids. Different teams of SNGPL have also conducted raids in different regions in Punjab on their own and detected 473 cases of 861 million cubic feet gas theft. This pilfered gas has a market value of Rs. 468.76 million. SNGPL has now accelerated its efforts to apprehend the culprits in all sectors like industries, commercial, domestic and special domestic at regional, sub-regional and even at village level.
Meanwhile, LESCO, police and Lahore city district government’s joint teams have conducted 2611 raids in the city, got registered 340 FIRs and 227 accused were arrested which included 21 big fish; 63 others are on bail-before arrest. 18 important operations were conducted in supervision of the Lahore DCO. As a result of LESCO’s efforts, unauthorized load of more than 157 MW electricity has been removed from the national grid. The pilferers have also been served with Rs. 84 million detection bills by the LESCO authorities.
Similarly, FESCO, police and Faisalabad city district government’s joint teams conducted 496 raids in Faisalabad, got registered 238 FIRs and 20 accused were arrested which included two big fish; raiding operations were also conducted in supervision of Faisalabad DCO. As a result of this, 1.57 Million KWH units of electricity, amounting to Rs.14.57 million, has been detected FESCO. Raids have also been conducted on CNG stations in various cities and unauthorized stations are sealed by the SNGPL.
During the checking, major techniques of theft used by the pilferers including tampering with gas meters to access the meter’s internal parts to disturb its recording mechanism, installation of meter in reverse direction to conceal recorded gas consumption, remote operation of jack to stop impellers of rotary meters, installation of fake seals after accessing and manipulating meters internal parts, halting the working of Electronic Volume Corrector (EVC) by using various techniques to conceal registration of gas, use of external magnetic force to halt working of gas meters, direct tapping of main-lines to provide gas to localities without gas by laying illegal network, tampering with gas regulators to get gas at increased flow and theft by non-consumers were noticed.
The raiding teams also found installation of by-passes (direct tapping from the gas-line) by pilferers which are very difficult to detect as it requires ditching at sites and it has been noticed that the pilferers are now hiding the installed by-passes in concrete blocks, under the sewerage lines, walls and buildings to hide it from raiding parties. Pilferers have developed techniques to deceive Electronic Volume Correctors which are used to detect the theft activities. Instances of EVC tampering have been noticed, whereby no physical evidence of tampering is left, which is very difficult to identify.
According to the sui gas officials, high-tech metering equipment is needed to control theft of gas and the same has been adopted by FESCO. They have proposed to adopt improved method of metering like tele-metering or Automated Meter Reading (AMR) and there should be load limiting devices in the metering equipment to control illegal extension of load. It should be kept in mind that consumers of domestic and commercial tariff are using illegal extension of load which is a serious social issue.
People indulge in energy theft due to many reasons. Lengthy procedures and red-tapism have made it quite difficult for the hapless consumers to follow legal procedures for getting power connections. For example, more than 8-10 steps are involved in obtaining a gas meter, including “greasing hands” of corrupt staff at all levels.
The government should also adopt realistic tariff keeping in view the socio- economic conditions of the people. Higher rates increase the losses through theft and consequently decrease overall revenues – thus a cycle of higher rates and higher theft ensues. Stopping theft is one part; savings should be passed on to users through lower rates. It’s also needed that collection of income tax, PTV fee and other surcharges being included in the electricity bill should be discontinued. These simply make the bills unbearable; and as a result, domestic and commercial consumers start stealing electricity. The incentives in the shape of less rates for big users be introduced to promote the more utilization of electricity. In the past, the request for installments of energy bills was a rare example but now huge numbers of domestic, commercial and industrial category consumers request for installments. The energy companies should start monitoring consumption of the consumers through maintaining the consumption-registers of industrial, tube wells, seasonal connections of A.C consumers separately and by taking their readings on regular basis. In this regard, a proper load control management system should be implemented through dedicated and highly skilled staff. It has shown excellent results in many countries. Electricity Act should also be amended to cover all ways and measures of theft of electricity. It should contain all the provisions to meet with the challenges being faced due to the evolvement of modern techniques for the pilferage of electricity. And more importantly, the whole energy sector should be overhauled to overcome the load shedding and theft of energy.
After Punjab, action by other provincial governments against pilferers is also needed as it’s a known fact that HESCO, PESCO, QESCO and TESCO have the highest line losses and ratio of payment of bills is also less than Punjab.
