KARACHI, Dec 13: The Anti-Privatization and Public Rights Forum (APPRF) has demanded immediate reversal of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC) privatisation agreement and to run the corporation as a regulatory body with good governance by handing it over to workers and a new management.
The forum also demanded constitution of judicial commission for probing the large-scale embezzlements and corruption in the privatised organisation, requesting the Supreme Court of Pakistan to take suo mottu notice for registering a case against the privatisation commission.
Addressing a press conference at Karachi Press Club, leaders of APPRF Afif Alvi, Raheel Iqbal, Birjees Ahmed, Yousf Mastikhan, Nabi Ahmed, Al-Haj Noor Muhammad, Manzoor Razi and others accused the KESC management of spending huge amounts on non-productive expenditures. They said that the organisation had reached the verge of destruction after privatisation, adding that the apprehensions expressed by them before its privatisation had proved true.
They pointed out that the new management was spending money like water on shifting the offices. They also said that the land which had been allotted to the KESC on nominal price could only be used for utility purpose and could not be sold or mortgaged or used for other purposes.
They said, there were reports that the KESC management had acquired loans of Rs20 billion by mortgaging some of the land with the International Finance Co, and this was a violation of the agreement. They demanded that the government take notice of the violation. The APPRF leaders said the new owner of the KESC under an agreement had given complete authority to run the corporation to a private company for two years.
They said this company had purchased generation units for KESC from Italy which run on furnace oil, adding that these units caused air pollution due to which the Italian government had declared them unusable.
These units have been purchased at a cost of Rs26 billion, and the KESC management had paid Rs20 billion that was acquired from the International Finance Co by mortgaging KESC Land for the purchase of the unit and the remaining Rs6 billion was to be paid, they said, adding that thus the KESC management did not use a single penny from their pockets for this purchase. They said that at the time of KESC privatisation it was decided between the government and the new management that the T&D loses would be brought down to 30 per cent by June 30, 2006. But, they said, even the report of the new management suggested that the T&D loses had surged to 35 per cent.
The forum leaders reminded that at the time of privatisation the then Federal Minister for Privatization Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh had declared that the new management would spend billions of dollars on the improvement of the the distribution and transmission system and would end load-shedding.
But, the fact was that today the power utility had turned into a 'torture cell' for domestic and commercial consumers, they added.
They pointed out that the recovery rate of the KESC had deteriorated as the rate which was Rs5 billion at the star, had decreased to Rs3.5 billion by June 2006, and the expenditures of the utility had exceeded Rs5 billion.
Keeping in view the 'horrible situation' of the cooperation, the privatisation agreement of the KESC be scraped forthwith and it must be run by a regulatory body with good governance by handing it over to workers and a new management, they demanded.
The APPRF leaders also demanded that a judicial commission be constituted to probe the irregularities, embezzlement and corruption in all the privatised organisations.
They also appealed to the chief justice of the Supreme Court to take suo motu notice for registration of cases against the privatisation commission for destroying the national entities by privatising them at throw-away prices.
They demanded that the government must be made accountable to the masses of the country and parliament instead of the United States and international monetary organisations.—Online
