KARACHI, Dec 28: The Karachi Electric Supply Corporation has shown a turnaround in revenue collection by over Rs5 billion. The total revenue earning during 1998-99 was Rs23.78 billion, which increased to Rs28.84 billion during the year 2000-01, a KESC spokesman stated here on Friday.
He said that according to latest financial statistics, the corporation has shown an increase of over Rs10 billion only in the cost of fuel and power purchase. The financial charges increased by Rs2.71 billion. While the operation, maintenance and administration expenses were reduced by Rs116 million, the KESC also paid Rs152 million in taxes to the national exchequer as compared to Rs119 million in FY 1998-99, says a press release.
While during the year 2000-01, mainly due to exorbitant increase in fuel prices, higher cost of power purchases from IPPs, higher cost of debt servicing and “insufficient” tariff increase resulted in a loss of Rs16 billion during the year, the accumulated losses of the KESC now stood at Rs48.6 billion, he added.
He said that the improvement in revenue collection was diluted due to the unprecedented increase in the cost of inputs and throughout the year cost of inputs remained higher than the income. After April 1999, the furnace oil prices increased by a minimum of 52 per cent to 143 per cent. During the year 2000-01 the average of furnace oil prices stood at 102.6 per cent.
Considering the huge price difference and the natural gas prices, the KESC converted all units of Bin Qasim Power station to gas but the gas prices also increased by 63 per cent.
However, improvement was made in the operational activities such as revamping of the Karachi distribution network, increase in number of grid stations for improved power supplies to the city and more funds were diverted for introducing the 11KV lines in the Kunda-infested areas of Surjani Town, Orangi and Bhitaiabad Gulshan-i-Johar for curbing power theft and technically defeating the illegal use of electricity.
The KESC spokesman said that after the induction of the army a number of remedial measures were instituted in the KESC to bring about efficiency and develop consumer-friendly corporate culture within the organization. The process of accountability continued. He said a total of 631 cases were instituted against the corrupt and inefficient employees and 40 employees were compulsorily retired, 33 removed and 237 dismissed from service. Seventy were punished with demotion, 77 were denied annual increment, 88 employees were warned and inquiries against 86 were in process.
The total income of the corporation, which was Rs17.9 billion in 1998, increased to Rs30.2 billion and the target for the year 2001-02 has been set at Rs35.7 billion.
The billing recovery ratio has improved from 85.7 per cent to 95.1 per cent in the last two years. Net energy dues have been brought down at the level of 4.5 months in FY 2000-01 from 6.13 equal billing months in FY 1998-99. Transmission and distribution losses which were 38.6 per cent in FY 1998-99 had risen to 40.2 per cent in FY 99-2000 due to correction of wrong billing, was reduced to 36.8 per cent in FY 2000-01. The target for 2000-01 has been fixed at 32 per cent.
The spokesman said that the out of 1.7 million consumers, only 41 per cent were paying the bills regularly. With the efforts of the KESC management, the bill paying customers have risen to 60 per cent by November. The average billing by the corporation used to be 60 per cent, which has also been brought down to 15 per cent in November. Similarly minimum billing is now being done only for 10 per cent consumers and that too due to a bona fide reason.
Efforts have been made to reduce the administrative expenditure through remedial measures. The amount under this head is Rs255 million. This also includes Rs170 million for salaries of 12,000 employees, which is only four per cent of the total expenditure. This has been further decreased by 7.6 per cent in previous year despite normal escalation. Largely, reductions have been made in payment of overtime, transport, medical, telephone and other expenses.
Generation capacity has also been restored from 1214 MW to 1412 MW. Power generation units have been converted to gas. Entire electricity distribution network of the city has been overhauled. Overloading on the distribution transformers, which was 14.4 per cent in FY 1999, has been reduced to 7 per cent in the year 2001. While, overloading from the 11 KV feeders has also been reduced from over 30 per cent to 16 per cent in the year 2001. During 2002, under a load balancing programme all the 7,800 transformers would be balanced and the overloading from them would be removed. At least 43 new 11 KV feeders, 51 high tension links, 300 PMTs/Sub-stations and 71 low tension cables at a cost of Rs656 million will be added to the city distribution system to provide smooth power supply to the consumers.
KESC has also evolved a strategy which has the potential of eliminating the power theft from its system with an estimated cost of Rs2 billion. Under the plan electricity consumption meters are being brought outside from the interior of the premises in the identified posh residential areas of Karachi, which will discourage tempering and bypassing of meters, installation of anti-theft boxes in industrial and commercial power supply meters. Bus bar metering system for highrises and multistoried shopping complexes, removal of kundas under a phased programme, protection of PMTs, installation of energy meters on transformers are some of the measures for providing quality electricity to the consumers and ensuring revenue to the corporation.
The spokesman said nearly 7,000 applicants were waiting for the connections for the last three to four years. They had been provided with the electricity connections and now the new connection applicant shall be provided a connection within four weeks after depositing the required charges. The low-income group areas were provided new connection on subsidized rates in order to discourage the use of kundas in poorer localities.
Facilitation was provided in payment of electricity dues in Oct 2001 and for the first time unprecedented number of instalments were allowed for payment of long outstanding dues by the industrial, commercial and residential consumers of the KESC. All such consumers where the outstanding dues were less than Rs10,000 and over 10 years old were waived off on a special request by the KESC management to the Board of Directors.
The Corporation will introduce facility of bill payment through the Internet and ATMs.
