KARACHI, Dec 22: Terming the KESC's action of discontinuing power supply to the offices of the KWSB and two town municipal administrations 'unlawful' and 'against all norms and principles' , the City Nazim, Niamatullah Khan, has said the KESC should have refrained from taking such an action against a public utility organization that has a status of essential service.

Addressing an impromptu press conference, he said that the KESC and KWSB, both being public service utility organizations, must extend cooperation to each other in the interest of general public, instead of creating hurdles in each other's working.

Managing Director of the KWSB Brig Iftikhar Haider and EDO (Finance) Shakeel Naqvi were also present at the press conference. "We do admit that KESC has the right to disconnect power supply of an organization which defaults on its electricity dues, but before resorting to such a drastic action the KESC should have realized that the KWSB is a public utility organization.

Will it be appropriate for the city government or the KWSB to stop water supply to any KESC installation even if the latter failed to clear its outstanding dues?" Mr Khan asked.

He recalled that the KESC had repeatedly been cutting off power supply to the KWSB in the past but its action had never been responded in the same manner. However, he added, it didn't mean that the city government was not in a position to take a similar action against the KESC.

The nazim questioned the justification of depriving 538 notified kathchi abadis, as well as almost the same number of unrecognized ones, if the KWSB was made to stop the uninterrupted water supply to the poor people's localities merely on the ground that the utility was getting hardly one to two per cent water charges from such abadis.

"On the one hand, the KESC has been disconnecting power supply of the KWSB time and again on account of non-payment of dues and, on the other, the corporation itself has not paid to the city government a sum of more than Rs2.024 billion although the amount is outstanding against it since 1992 under the head of octroi. Isn't it amazing?''

Elaborating, he said that according to a Supreme Court verdict, the KESC was supposed to pay off Rs2.024 billion to the city government on account of electricity import, it was not complying with the apex court's decision on the grounds that the verdict was given on the basis of 'megawatt' and the mode of billing appeared to be on the basis of megawatt hours.

"In addition to the Rs2.024 billion dues, we may also claim billions of rupees more under the head of land-use charges because all the electricity poles, transformers, grid stations and sub-stations are installed on the city government's land,'' he pointed out.

The city nazim warned that the city government could opt for claiming another Rs50 billion under the head of the land-use charges, if the KESC did not change its attitude. "Yet, we are not doing this because we don't want to create hindrance in the KESC's privatization process,'' he said.

Lashing out at the KESC for disconnecting the KWSB's power supply, he said that although the KWSB had been facing some financial problems owing to some unavoidable circumstances, it had been making payments of Rs70-80 million per month as electricity charges in the past, although the amount paid during the last two months came to about Rs100 million.

Niamatullah Khan said that it was also in the knowledge of the KESC high-ups that an amount of no less than Rs3.491 billion as KWSB dues was outstanding against various government and semi-government organizations. As such, he added, the corporation should have kept this fact in view before going for a drastic action against the KWSB.