Da Vinci: Nothing Strengthens Authority So Much As Silence (e.g. in the Peshawar Electric Supply Company)?
(The first half of this story can be read at:
Juvenal: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes (e.g. in the Peshawar Electric Supply Company)?
Part 8
On Christmas Eve (December 24 2023) at 07:15:19am, 8118 texted me to say that my Account Information complaint (Ticket no. 23122126000033) has been reported Resolved; I replied no at 02:30:00pm the same day. 8118 repeated the same text on December 27 2023 at 03:43:45pm & I replied no a minute later. On December 27 2023 between ~03:40:00pm & ~04:15:00pm, 8118 texted me to say that my Account Information complaint (Ticket no. 23122126000033) & my Bribery/Corruption complaint (Ticket No. 23112126000001) have both been reported Resolved, to both of which I replied no, as well as to point out that - just as in the Excess Billing complaint - PESCO had mixed up the ref. nos. between Mudasar Agha & Himad Owais Agha in the Bribery/Corruption complaint.
8118 texted back to say that, in order to prove that PESCO disconnected meter ref. no. 02262140021880 on August 3 2023 9am & we never reconnected it within our house since then, as well as to learn what are the differences between & grounds for an ACTIVE & SREAD meter status, I must personally visit the SDO (Sajjad?) at his office with an application, a paid bill copy & 2 copies of my Computerized National Identity Card (CNIC); given, all bills are stored in the PESCO database, my complaints already stood formally filed via ccms.pitc.com.pk & 8118, & my CNIC is legally none of PESCO's business, I told 8118 that I feared foul play & requested it to continue acting as intermediary...which 8118 said was expressly rejected by PESCO, but 8118 still chose to ask me to text 8118 my complaint history; I referred 8118 to the relevant ccms.pitc.com.pk complaint history webpages & my LinkedIn Article covering matters until that point:
This didn't change matters, as 8118 texted me that PESCO continues to insist I will receive neither a written explanation nor any legal relief, unless I visit the SDO (Sajjad?), while PESCO continued to label the meter registered to Mudasar Agha, as registered to Himad Owais Agha. I underscored the mens rea implications in PESCO's conduct & requested 8118 to forward my concerns to PITC decision-makers, to which 8118 replied that the necessity of a chat between me & the SDO (Sajjad?) had been declared imperative by top PESCO officials. PESCO then closed my Bribery & Corruption as well as my Account Information complaints, sans correcting the bill problem with ref no 02262140021880 or explaining the meaning/change from ACTIVE to SREAD in the ref no 02262140021870 status...& felt so proud of its customer service quality, it (apparently) marked the complainant feedback section for the Bribery/Corruption complaint on the ccms.pitc.com.pk website as "SATISFIED" (which I informed 8118 via text, was inaccurate, considering that my mother & I are extremely UNSATISFIED)...& that is where the story ended, with the implication that Pakistan's utility companies have the absolute power to be judge, jury & executioner...&, as Lord Acton once said, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
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Part 9
Thus, at this point, I am left with no clear Pakistan-based legal forum:
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police ("KP police's quality of investigation is the worst: CJP" https://www.samaa.tv/208734845-kp-police-s-quality-of-investigation-is-the-worst-cjp)?
The National Accountability Bureau (whom my mother & I contacted on August 3 2023, through several cellphone calls & urgent text messages summarizing the security threat we faced, addressed to [now former] NAB official Mr. Ziaullah Toru, who was either too busy or felt too legally unempowered to so much as answer us)?
Any relevant Ministry, in view of the fact that the Caretaker Government has crossed its 3-month time limit, & thus is unlikely to have the legal authority to address the problem?
USAID, which has reportedly been improving PESCO's performance since over a decade...with the aforementioned results?
Part 10
However, would any consumer of electricity or natural gas face such financial & reputational harm, if #Islamabad had not disobeyed the Law by moving utility meters out of the consumer's premises? All that has happened is that either power company employees or hostile neighbors or common thieves either steal the meter or electronically distort the readings, while the customer remains solely responsible for a meter over which he/she has no way of keeping a check.
Can a photograph solve the legal conundrum? Since the launch of Microsoft's "PC PAINTBRUSH" (initial release 1984, stable release 1994) which made altering numbers in a photograph, child's play; to the advent of "deepfake" apps since the 1990s (many of which are both free & can be used on a smartphone, nowadays) that can produce realistic photos, audio/video clips, etc. ... which means bill meter photographs can never be legally admissible evidence ever again.
Is the lack of any legal evidence in the electricity & natural gas sectors of Pakistan, the reason behind (sporadic/year-round, scheduled/unscheduled ) gas & electricity "loadshedding" (which has been renamed either "load management" or "maintenance", since the powers-that-be have declared the loadshedding issue "solved"), e.g. Jamrud Electricity Grid Station (which supplies my home) carries out 6-8-hour "maintenance"-related power shutdowns approximately every third week; the latest session being for December 30 2023 9am-3pm...in addition to the daily 4-5pm "load management" shutdown.
Considering that the current scenario has reduced a utility bill from a legally-admissible document to a mere payment receipt to a citizen by a gas/electricity company for unspecified reasons, can utility companies be viewed as racketeers, extortionists &/or organized crime cartels?