KARACHI, March 9: Lt-Gen Zulfiqar Ali Khan, chairman of the Water and Power Development Authority and the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation, advised KESC engineers and workers to exploit and broaden their own expertise instead of depending on foreign hands for the upkeep and efficient operations of the Bin Qasim power station here on Saturday.
He was visiting the KESC Bin Qasim power station and examined in detail the functioning of all the six 210 megawatts power generating units at the station and inspected the rehabilitation work being carried out on Unit No 3 with the help of two Italian engineers. Chief engineer BQPS Jamil Panwar informed the chairman that the unit would be ready for start up by March 16.
Lt-Gen Zulfiqar directed the BQPS chief engineer to prepare the action plan for the maintenance of Unit 5 utilizing the local expertise. The plan should be transparent, cost-effective and indicative of responsibility.
Speaking to workers of the BQPS, the KESC chairman said they were through their hard work shouldering the heavy responsibility of providing electricity to the biggest industrial and commercial city of the country as the BQPS was the main source of power supply to Karachi.
He said the decrease in energy supply from the station created a major gap between the city’s demand and availability position forcing the KESC to resort to loadshedding.
He said it was satisfying to note that with the hard work of power station engineers and workers the generation capacity would increase to 1,170MW this year.
KESC managing director Brig Tariq Saddozai briefed the chairman that the power generating unit No 6 was the last unit on full capacity performance as it was commissioned in December 1997 increasing the total installed capacity to 1,260MW.
