KARACHI, Nov 10: Siemens Pakistan has terminated its operation and maintenance contract with the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation.

This was announced by a spokesman for Siemens here on Saturday.

He said Siemens had terminated the contract due to “material default by the KESC on terms of contract”.

The spokesman added that Siemens staff had been withdrawn completely from the KESC as of Saturday and that the company now had no connection whatsoever with the utility as far as the O&M contract was concerned.

He said the company had gone to court for the recovery of its receivables which, he claimed, in terms of services and equipment amounted to Rs16billion.

However, the KESC says Siemens served it with a notice on Sept 25, 2007 regarding its intention of terminating the O&M agreement with a forty-five days cure period unless certain issues identified in the notice were addressed.

On expiry of cure period ie Nov 8, 2007, Siemens withdrew its seventy-eight personnel from the KESC without giving advance notice of withdrawing its seconded personnel, says a KESC statement issued on Saturday.

“Since the utility had anticipated this situation, we made requisite arrangements by replacing almost all Siemens seconded employees and now operations of the KESC are being managed by suitably qualified, experienced personnel. This has ensured no disruption in the utility’s operations/services to its customers as we placed ourselves in a comfortable position in the context of trained manpower,” says the KESC statement.--Agencies