Power company terminates 20 workers over electricity theft

LAHORE: The power distribution company in Lahore has terminated its 20 workers for their alleged involvement in electricity theft, ARY News reported on Sunday.

The Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO) spokesperson said in a statement that actions were taken against 87 workers in 78 days. 20 LESCO workers have been terminated after being found guilty of electricity theft, he added.

Additionally, 21 workers of the power firm faced demotion, promotion of six employees was stopped and three employees were given forced retirement.

The spokesperson concluded that the accused employees include the line superintendent, meter reader, lineman and other staffers.

Earlier in the month, the Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO) detected 282 connections from where power consumers were pilfering electricity in all its circles of five districts during anti-power theft crackdown.

A LESCO spokesman told the media that the company had submitted applications to the police stations concerned for registration of FIRs against 268 electricity thieves, out of which 176 cases were registered, while 24 accused were arrested.

The anti-power theft operations against electricity thieves are being conducted on the directives of the Federal Power Division and the LESCO Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Engineer Shahid Haider is supervising these operations.

The LESCO chief vowed that the operations would continue without discrimination until the complete end of electricity theft. The electricity pilferers as well as the LESCO officers and employees who facilitate them are also being brought to justice.

Among the seized connections 20 were commercial, 02 agricultural and 260 domestic, and all these connections were disconnected and charged with a total of 307,574 units as detection bill amounting to Rs 13.186 million.

During the 68 days of grand anti-theft campaign, the spokesman mentioned, the LESCO detected pilferage on 26,125 power connections and submitted 25,847 FIR applications against electricity thieves in the relevant police stations out of which 24,998 FIRs have been registered, while 12,568 accused have so far been arrested by the police.

The LESCO has so far charged a total of 48,108,264 detection units worth Rs 1,990,830,066 to all the power pilferers.