LARKANA: A single village in Ratodero has become a test case for one of the most stubborn problems in Pakistan’s power sector. Sukkur Electric Power Company (SEPCO) has launched a pilot rural electrification project in Khairudero village to curb electricity theft and cut the financial losses that widespread illegal hooking has inflicted on the utility.
The initiative was launched on the proposal of SEPCO Board independent member Naveen Mangi, who also serves as managing trustee of the Ali Hassan Mangi Memorial Trust. Before the project began, most households in the village were drawing electricity through illegal kunda connections — wires thrown directly over distribution lines, unmetered and unbilled.
In the first phase, connections of around 500 households using illegal hookups were disconnected. So far, 70 families have applied for and received legal electricity meters.
The most immediate change has been felt inside people’s homes. After legal connections were installed, power supply improved from only three to four hours a day to roughly 14 hours daily — a shift that reframes the meter not as a penalty but as a service upgrade.
That trade-off is central to the pilot’s logic. Feeders carrying heavy unbilled load are typically subjected to extended outages; bringing consumers onto the billing rolls eases that pressure and restores hours to the same households that were previously stealing them.
According to local sources, an estimated Rs 180,000 was being collected every month from households using illegal connections — none of which was deposited into SEPCO’s official revenue. In effect, the village was paying for electricity; the utility simply was not the one being paid.
Officials said the pilot is intended to develop a practical, repeatable model for eliminating power theft that could be extended across SEPCO’s jurisdiction, which covers Sukkur, Larkana and adjoining districts. They stressed, however, that any expansion would require consistent enforcement carried out without political pressure — historically the point at which anti-theft drives in rural Sindh have stalled.
Distribution losses and unrecovered billing remain among the largest drains on Pakistan’s power sector, feeding the circular debt that limits generation and keeps tariffs high for paying consumers. A village-level template that converts illegal users into billed customers — while visibly improving supply — is precisely the kind of evidence regulators and distribution companies have been seeking.
Local residents, officials said, have shown interest in obtaining legal meters.
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