Islamabad: The $400m smart meter project championed by Asian Development Bank (ADB) has hit snags, as the scheme is said to be facing two-year delays because of complex bidding process and loggerheads over technology.
As per a recent monitoring report by the donor agency, half of the total $3.4b projects are said to be facing implementation delays and have been labelled as problematic. The smart meters project is not said to be one of those affected ones, said ADB.
The recent review revealed that the $400m approved by the ADB hasn’t been disbursed at all due to a lack of financial and physical process on the project till June 2017.
According to the report, not one contract had been awarded till June 2017 for this project. The Planning Commission of Pakistan had voiced opposition to this project stating it was technically unfeasible. It had urged the ADB to fund transmission line expansion projects instead.
The aim of this smart meter’s project is to introduce advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) in all distribution companies in Pakistan. All of the country’s nine DISCO’s are slated to get these smart meters in phases.
At the start, ADB picked up Islamabad Electric Supply Company (IESCO) and Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO) for installing these smart meters.
These prepaid smart electricity meters are supposed to ensure 100pc collection of bills and in the pilot phase 2m of these and communication equipment will be installed by 2019 in areas under jurisdiction of IESCO and LESCO.
IESCO will need to install 1.2m of these smart meters and 800,000 in LESCO’s jurisdiction. The master bidding document for this project was approved by the ADB on the 19th of July last month.
This project aims to incorporate a data management system (DMS) for both LESCO and IESCO jurisdictions, impart training to its respective officers in this given regard. No progress has been made in this given regard.
The other aim of this project was to bolster monitoring procedures for theft detection by 2017, but ADB is still looking to hire a consultant in this regard which is expected to be concluded by September next month.
And lastly, ADB wanted to introduce new billing systems in the aforementioned areas by 2017, for that it requires to impart training to 700 personnel on Billing System and CIS by 2019.
