KARACHI, March 1: Businessmen and industrialists are at loggerheads with the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC) on three issues relating to load shedding, issuance of illegal bills and unjustified disconnections of power supply lines.

Chairman SITE Association of Industry Dr Mirza Ikhtiar Baig has strongly criticized the KESC Management for the continued long load shedding in the SITE Industrial area.

He said that the KESC, currently resorting to long hour load shedding, was not providing a competitive environment to the local industries as offered in the regional countries to their industries.

He said that according to the KESC's own technical staff, the load shedding might increase in summer. Dr Baig, who is also on the board of directors of KESC, advised the board members to address the issue that was affecting the production of the industry.

The board of directors authorized the Site chairman to negotiate in the installation of new towers of 132 KV line to avert the present load shedding on priority basis.

Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) has surfaced the issue of issuance of illegal supplementary bills to the industrialists and traders by the KESC Billing Department, which was earlier suspended for quite some time.

Chairman public sector utilities, power and gas sub committee of the KCCI, Imran Saeed Baghpat held a meeting at the KCCI, urged the KESC to conduct billing on actual consumption and not on the basis of unlawfully calculated connected load by the KESC authorities.

North Karachi Association of Trade and Industry highlighted the issue of unjustified disconnection of power. A spokesman for the association said that power lines of numerous industries were being disconnected, thus affecting their production programmes for export schedule and liability of paying the wages to workers who were sitting idle in the absence of electricity.

He said that industrialists had already paid the bills but the KESC was bent upon disconnecting the power supply. Industrialists, whose lines were disconnected, were being asked by the KESC men to pay an amount of Rs650 as restoration charges of the disconnected line.