Islamabad, Sep 19 (IANS): A Pakistani electricity supply company has billed its customers for power that was neither supplied nor used, prompting a daily to note that "bill-paying customers were effectively being defrauded by their electricity supplier in an effort to cover its own negligence and deficiency".

An editorial in the News International Wednesday said there appears to be "no limit to which unscrupulous power companies will stoop to fleece their long-suffering customers".

"The Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO) has billed its customers for power that has either never been supplied or used. Were this to be a matter of a few rupees here and there one might have understood, but it is Rs.100 billion a year, and it might be supposed that if LESCO is doing it then there is every reason to, at the very least, suspect that other companies are doing the same," it said.

The daily said that 'excessive billing' may account for as much as 20 percent of the overall billing figure.

A letter written by the chairman of the LESCO Board of Directors to the water and power secretary July 14, 2012 says that "an internal audit of excessive billing in Kasur reveals that in the year 2011, up to December, Rs.6.79 billion was overcharged to customers to cover line losses and reduce arrears".

"Bill-paying customers were effectively being defrauded by their electricity supplier in an effort to cover its own negligence and deficiency," it added.

The daily went on to say that consumers rightly contest their bills when they become aware of overbilling; "some are reduced on appeal but clearly many are not and this novel form of daylight robbery goes on largely unnoticed by a majority of those who pay their bills".

"The list of inefficiencies relating to recovery rates and poor recovery adds up to almost the sum by which electricity consumers have been robbed when added to line losses, theft and 'exemptions'.

"Almost as a footnote, we learn that the billing database system used ... in Lahore was developed in 1968 and has been obsolete for years," it added.