Federal Power Minister Awais Leghari said on Wednesday that non-payment of electricity bills by consumers was one of the main reasons behind load-shedding across the country.
Speaking during a session of the National Assembly of Pakistan, the minister said zero load-shedding was being carried out on 11,500 electricity feeders. He added that suspending load-shedding altogether would further increase financial losses.
Leghari said the government had decided to shift the load-shedding mechanism from feeder level to transformer level. He stated that technical matters would be settled within a year before the policy was enforced.
The federal minister said even in his own constituency, five feeders were facing up to 18 hours of load-shedding.
He said load-shedding would now be imposed on the basis of transformers instead of feeders. Areas linked to transformers where consumers failed to pay electricity bills would face power outages.
Also Read: Electricity consumers paid over Rs1,906bn taxes in 3 years
Separately, it was reported that the after petroleum products, electricity bills had also emerged as a major source of tax collection, with consumers paying more than Rs1.906 trillion in taxes over the past three years.
According to documents obtained by Samaa TV, more than Rs700 billion was collected from electricity consumers in taxes during the last year alone.
The documents showed that electricity distribution companies collected Rs507 billion in taxes from consumers during 2022-23.
Tax collection through electricity bills rose to Rs698 billion in 2023-24, while last year’s collection crossed the Rs700 billion mark.
