March 14, 2008	Friday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 5, 1429

KARACHI, March 13: As the issue of the controversial dues of the Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) outstanding against the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) still remains unresolved, the city suffered another day of losses worth about Rs5 billion due to power outages.

While, the secretary water and power has called the chiefs of the Pepco and the KESC to amicably settle the dispute, Karachiites braved yet another day of hours-long power cuts on Thursday as the power utility is said to have suffered a shortfall of 500 megawatts.

It would be instructive to mention that the Pepco had set April 1 as the deadline for the KESC to pay the outstanding dues.

The KESC officials are not responding to questions about the content of the Pepco’s notice as to why it was asking the power utility to pay for a unit if a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) had been signed with the KESC.

The KESC chief was also not available for comments as to why the utility did not challenge the unilateral increase in tariff by the Pepco in favour of the Water and Power Development Authority in 2006 after the privatization of the KESC.

It is very strange that the Wapda continued to supply about 700 megawatts without asking for the dues. The power supply demand of the city has resurged to 2,000 megawatts with the rise in mercury-level. The power utility has been struggling hard since March 6 to meet the demand of the city but to no avail owing to its faulty power generation units of its indigenous production systems, much curtailed supply through the national grid, and highly wrecked status of the electricity transmission and distribution networks in the city. Sources in the KESC said that the Wapda supply for the city could not go beyond 220 megawatts at anytime during 24 hours.

They said that the faulty and tripped generation units, one each at Bin Qasim and Korangi thermal power facilities, had been adding to the woes of the KESC to overcome power demands of the city of over 10 million population.

Among other problems, the KESC has not been getting the electricity input since March 6 from the recently commissioned DHA’s desalination plant.

They said that the lingering row over payment of dues between Wapda and the city’s power utility, amounting to several billions of rupees was still far from over as the KESC, facing serious financial problems, could not pay the electricity dues any sooner. According to some media reports on Thursday, the Pepco, a subsidiary organisation of Wapda, had asked the KESC to pay Rs3 billion as electricity dues till April 1. But the KESC sources say that the power utility is not at all in a position to observe the payment of dues in the given timeframe.

The KESC sources say that in case the row between Wapda and the power utility remained unresolved then any drastic punitive action on the part of the Pepco, much similar to the action of March 6, would enlarge the power crisis to horrendous proportions having devastating effects on the social, economic, industrial, and trade activities of the city.