ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad Electric Supply Company (Iesco) severed power supply to the Capital Development Authority (CDA) offices for non-payment of bills.

The CDA and Iesco have for long been at loggerhead over unpaid bills. On Monday, Iesco discontinued electricity supply to the CDA Secretariat for non-payment of bills amounting to Rs827 million.

However, the CDA termed the Iesco move the violation of an agreement which they entered into about three years ago.

The CDA also claimed that bills on the bases of which Iesco discontinued the electricity supply were calculated on an assumption rather than a proper metering system.

`Iesco discontinued electricity supply to the Secretariat for non-payment of streetlight bills.

In 2012, on the directives of the government we switched off 50 per cent of streetlights but are still being charged against all the streetlights,` said Ramzan Sajid, the CDA spol
He said the authority had been requesting Iesco to charge it on the basis of 50 per cent streetlights. He said the CDA would again take up the matter with Iesco.

`We have been requesting Iesco to install proper meters to determine the electricity consumption by streetlights,` he said.

When asked if the CDA was defaulting on the streetlight electricity bills, why Iesco discontinued the electricity of the chairman office, the spokesman said: `Actually, they discontinued the power supply to our main offices to put pressure on us to pay the bills,` he said.

On the other hand, Afshan Mudassar, the Iesco spokesperson, said electricity supply to the CDA was discontinued due to non-payment of bills.

`If there was any agreement, why the CDA kept mum over the issue when we served them a notice,` she said, adding Iesco had a proper mechanism for the preparation of bills.

It may be noted that there are around 33,000 streetlights in Islamabad.

However, in 2012 the CDA switched off half of them and says Iesco still charged the civic agency against the 33,000 streetlights.

Sources in the CDA told Dawn that both the CDA and Iesco did not know how much power the streetlights consumed. It has been a routine for both the organisations to wrangle over the number of power units the streetlights consumed as there is no proper metering system.