Illegal use of electricity remains as the key reason for the systems loss while the authorities are struggling to meet the huge shortage of electricity amid ever-increasing demand against limited generation.

"The scale of unauthorised use of electricity in the city is quite mind-boggling. But once we cut off an illegal connection, we see it is reconnected again in a day or two," said an official from the monitoring department of Desa.

A section of dishonest Desa staff are allegedly involved with providing the illegal connections and maintaining them in exchange for bribe.

A large number of residential and commercial establishments, slums and small factories in the city are using electricity illegally.

"The slum dwellers tend go to any extent to have access to electricity and they can easily restore the removed connections due to the nature of their makeshift houses," the official said.

Hundreds of shops in several hawkers' markets in Nilkhet, Azimpur, Sayedabad, Shyampur and Sadarghat areas are also using electricity without meter. These establishments are defying the tariff policies of Power Development Board (PDB) by paying a fixed amount of money to the market authorities regardless of the usage of electricity.

Currently 13 magistrates are conducting the drives against power pilferages. Of them, three are Desa's own magistrates.

Desa officials claimed that the systems loss in the capital city has gone down from 24 percent to around 18 percent over the past few months due to the frequent disconnection drives.

Although Desa claimed to have collected around Tk 250 crore of arrears in addition to its regular electricity bills during the first quarter of this year, Desa officials themselves admitted that their target to collect another Tk 650 crore by the year-end would be a daunting task.

According to sources in Desa, the undesirably high systems loss is due to the severe malpractices within PDB and Desa. The efficiency of the system largely depends on the individuals who are integral parts of that system.

The sources said around Tk 2,000 crore was plundered in the past few years through widespread corruption, malpractices and illegal use of electricity.

The Desa officials claimed that systems loss occurs due to the operational or technical failures but in reality pilferage of electricity is the main reason.

"Like any other physical systems, electricity generation and distribution systems are not flawless and there must be system loss," said a Desa high official.

"In western countries the rate of the system loss is not more than 1 percent. But in our country, although almost similar technology has been adopted for electricity generation and transmission, the system loss is around 25 percent. The reason behind this is not just technical flaws in the system," he added.