by Amir Sial
The Ministry of Water and Power has given one month’s time to the board of directors of all state-owned power distribution companies (DISCOs) to finalise candidates for appointment as chief executive officers.
An official source said that the advertisements for the post of CEOs for all DISCOs, except for the PESCO, were floated two months back and subsequently the boards were directed a few days back to finalise candidates for CEO posts within a month’s time.
All the respective boards will be finalising three candidates each. The names of shortlisted candidates would be forwarded to the prime minister for final decision, added the source.
Once the CEOs are appointed, they would be given complete power to appoint their management teams.
The ministry had earlier reconstituted boards of all DISCOs, as they had failed to fulfill the performance criteria signed with the ministry. Interestingly, during the last one year, the ministry has frequently changed the management and boards of DISCOs on the basis of the performance criteria.
Their performance is mainly judged on the basis of daily recovery, which is in billions of rupees. The stringent checks put in place have helped increase power bill recovery from under 85 per cent to over 94 per cent. The government wants hundred percent bill recovery after elimination of load shedding from 2018 onwards.
The government plans to privatise DISCOs after they are made profitable. The better-managed DISCOs would help attract investors to take over the companies.
The government also plans to off-load shares of its two profitable DISCOs at the local stock exchange this year to initiate the process of privatisation of power sector.
