Pakistan Considers Ending Six-Month Extra Electricity Charges for Consumers Exceeding 200 Units

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Energy Awais Leghari has said the government is working to eliminate additional electricity charges imposed on consumers for six months when their monthly consumption exceeds the 200-unit threshold by even a single unit.

Speaking during a Senate session, the minister said the government was also considering increasing the threshold from 200 to 250 units. He added that electricity subsidies and relief would be targeted at consumers genuinely living below the poverty line.

The issue was raised through a calling attention notice submitted by Senator Abid Sher Ali, who highlighted the financial burden caused by electricity tariffs and slab-based billing.

Speaking in the Senate, Sher Ali said that when monthly electricity consumption rises from 200 to 201 units, the applicable rate can reportedly jump from around Rs15 to Rs30 per unit. As a result, he argued, an increase of just one unit can expose low-income consumers to substantially higher bills under the higher consumption slab.

Criticising the existing system, he said the slab structure placed an unfair burden on poor households and left ordinary citizens struggling with inflated electricity bills for months.

Responding to the notice, Leghari acknowledged that the issue was genuine and said the Energy Ministry was seriously examining possible changes.

He explained that the government was working to end the system under which consumers exceeding 200 units by just one unit face additional charges for the following six months. Raising the threshold to 250 units was also under consideration.

However, the minister pointed out that the number of consumers using less than 200 units of electricity had increased to around 20 million.

Leghari said providing the same discount to every consumer in this category would not be appropriate, as it also included financially well-off households whose recorded electricity consumption was low because they had installed solar power systems.

He stressed that the government intended to restrict subsidies and relief to genuinely deserving households living below the poverty line, ensuring that assistance directly benefited those most in need.

The proposed changes remain under consideration, and no final decision on ending the six-month additional charges or raising the consumption threshold to 250 units was announced during the session.