May 15, 2006	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 16, 1427

THIS is the first post privatization summer season, which one thought would be sans outages, considering that the utility was now in professionally competent hands. Both the KESC and the philosophy of privatisation have come under serious scrutiny. KESC has attracted fire from all sides. National Assembly expressed great annoyance. Business and industry are equally furious.

President of Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry termed the frequency and intensity of breakdowns over the past few days to have broken all previous records. This, he said, was causing huge losses to trade and industry besides inflicting unbearable miseries to Karachiites. Only a few days back, almost half the city had plunged into darkness following an incident of cable snapping.

SITE Association has severely criticized the utility saying that in spite of high hopes from privatization, the performance has been disappointing. It has failed to upgrade the distribution and transmission system to prevent breakdowns. Sixty per cent breakdowns, according to Acting Chairman SITE occur on account tripping at grids.

Out of 59 feeders in SITE area, 85 per cent ‘were victims of overloading and tripping’. He complained that the utility did not keep the industry informed and as a result, the industry was suffering a shut down. He also referred to notices issued by the utility to warn the industry to brave load shedding for an indefinite period.

This is also an examination season and kids preparing for their examinations are simply at their wits ends. Extreme weather with mosquitoes squeezing their last ounce of blood, city residents are hard put to survive. Hospitals and patients are in a desperate predicament because absence of electricity could put the patients at risk. And since the electricity can go off without notice, it is not inconceivable that it may disappear while a crucial stage of procedure is underway in an operation theatre.

In spite of one’s serious reservations on absence of democracy in the blessed country, one had welcomed KESC’s privatisation as perhaps the only good thing this government had done. One didn’t care if it was sold for a song. It was a lost case any way.

After all selling Pakistan Steel for a song not even recovering the price of the land on which it is located, selling United Bank for Rs12 billion within a month or two of sinking Rs20 billion by the state, sale of Khoski Sugar Mill by Fauji Foundation and a host of other enterprises did not do much credit to the claimed transparency of the government.

Taxpayers were paying approximately $1 billion every month to keep it afloat. The government had been paying heavily to sustain this white elephant. It paid Rs8 billion in 2002-03, Rs12 billion in 2003-04 and Rs23 billion in the last financial year. This is not counting previous injections in the name of equity.

Citizens of Karachi are paying a heavy price for the shenanigans of the uninformed guardians of the utility. One thought that good management practices of the private sector would change things. But the first summer after privatisation has dented the hopes.

KESC blamed Wapda for the abrupt disruption of supply of power for some unknown technical reason. That caused 150 feeders to trip. In spite of distress calls, Wapda, according to the spokesman did not restore supply.

A spokesman for the utility claimed that 1994 power policy had disallowed the utility to generate any more electricity and capped the plans of KESC for more power generation stations. As if a different policy would have resulted in more IPPs..

Wapda denied having withheld supply of power despite huge backlog of arrears. KESC owed Rs6 billion by end March this year and would owe Rs7.5b by the end of April. It was committed to providing 535 MW and could supply more if necessary. It blamed KESC for allowing one of its circuits to trip and for failing to upgrade its systems.

Mr Mohammad Haleem Khan, a senior member of the team running the privatised KESC, informed this scribe the new management was very focused on the direction the KESC would take. What may not surprise many long inured to such news, was his revelation that the outgoing management had awarded huge contracts, before the hand over, at inflated prices. One of the first things the new management did was to renegotiate the contracts thereby saving a sum of Rs850 million.

Haleem told the writer that there are 3,000 vehicles with the utility and the former management had approved only two PSO petrol pumps where petrol could be had. Imagine the distances one would have to travel in the sprawling city of Karachi just to get the fuel.

Obviously, so much more gas was being bought by an ever-sinking organisation. About 3000 vehicles big and small, travelling miles and miles only to get gas and wasting so much in the bumper to bumper traffic instead of attending to complaints of the consumer represent the lowest level of efficiency and highest level of incompetence.

Then I was told that there were 10,000 direct telephone lines with the employees. The enormity of expenditure the infrastructure involves should be juxtaposed with the callous service, which the public utility provided to the consumer by keeping the phones perpetually engaged, or in the unlikely event of attending by doing nothing.

The new management is trying to put things in order. It is relying on technology to fix things. It has decided to give each employee a biometric card to ensure punctuality. It would monitor employee response to complaints by logging each call of complaint and the time taken to attend to it. It is restricting vehicles to particular areas of about two kilometres radius.

To ensure that the vehicles do not leave their assigned areas, satellite-tracking system is being put in place. That is all very well. But what about the dilapidated infrastructure, the distribution and transmission systems? The management may perhaps have concentrated more on the image part first. No argument with that.

What went wrong and what may yet go wrong in the future would be a moot point. Private management, one assumes, is more competent, honest and professional. But this would be their first experience of handling a privatised organisation with ‘public sector’ mentality.

They would find it very difficult to get out of that rut. Private sector is not immune to lateral pressure from government functionaries to compromise on merit. Or perhaps the new management may have gone after image building without giving equal attention to substance like fixing dilapidated infrastructure.

As for the blame game, one can say with some experience that Wapda is in the habit of demanding high prices for power having to cover its huge expenditure. A case in point is that of AJK, where Wapda has flouted decisions of the power ministry to demand higher rates.

The spat between Wapda and KESC was a constant refrain for years and had briefly died down when the former chairman/general became the chairman KESC as well. If Wapda could put up with arrears and the rate of electricity, why should it make the task of private management more onerous during the first summer?