Bahria Town massively increases electricity rates for twin city residents

RAWALPINDI: Bahria Town Rawalpindi has increased the prices of electricity for consumers here on Thursday.

According to the details, Bahria Town Rawalpindi has once again put the entire burden on the residents, who have already purchase electricity on premium rates.

Bahria Town Rawalpindi has announced an increase of Rs 4 per unit for domestic and Rs 7 for commercial consumers.

As per the Bahria Town billing department, in a message issued to the residents dated January 2019, after the increase in the price of electricity sold by IESCO to Bahria Town, the Bahria Billing Department started losing crores of rupees per month.

In view of this situation, Bahria Town immediately applied for a revision in the electricity prices in NEPRA.

Despite several hearings and meetings on this petition, a final decision could not be taken.

In April 2023, in view of all the circumstances, the Nepra authority issued orders to the Islamabad Electric Supply Corporation (IESCO) to bring the billing department of Bahria Town under its control so that the consumers of Bahria Town could also get electricity per unit at the IESCO rate.

Bahria Town agreed to these orders, but IESCO refused to comply with these orders.

Meanwhile, Bahria Town’s request for a new distribution license from 2022 is still pending in NEPRA. After the increase in the IESCO rate last year, Bahria Town applied to NEPRA in September 2023 and said that until the new prices of electricity for Bahria Town are fixed, a temporary relief of Rs 12 should be provided in the bill purchase rate of Bahria Town so that Bahria Town bills your customers according to the IESCO rate. But NEPRA has not yet issued any decision on this.

Therefore, in order to pay the IESCO bill, Bahria Town has to increase the price of electricity sold to consumers, which was reported to NEPRA in March 2024.

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Consumers’ domestic bill for April 2024 is being increased by Rs 4 as a tariff adjustment and the commercial bill by Rs 7.

Apart from this, other charges are separate; they are also being shifted to the electricity bill.

It is hoped that the residents of Bahria Town will fully support Bahria Town to reduce the price of Bahria Billing Purchase Price from NEPRA so that the residents of Bahria Town can also get electricity at the rate of IESCO.