April 02, 2008	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 24, 1429

KARACHI, April 1: As the mercury rose to 31.2 degrees Celsius on Tuesday, citizens continued to endure power outages due to the widening gap between the supply and demand of electricity.

The power crisis still looms large as the row over the outstanding bills between the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) and the Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) remains unresolved.

On Tuesday, the KESC’s Bin Qasim power plant was reportedly generating 1,045 megawatts; Korangi Thermal Power Station was giving 70 megawatts while the KANUPP was not available.

The joint supply of Gul Ahmad and Tapal remained at 124 megawatts while the DHA desalination plant was supplying 60 megawatts.

According to sources in the KESC’s load dispatch centre, the total available of power was 1,859MW while the demand was fluctuating between 2,111 and 2,130 MW. Despite the financial dispute, the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) continued to supply 300 megawatts.

However, sources in the KESC were sceptical about the working of the Bin Qasim generating units as they developed leakages regularly.

The saturating generation capacity of the Karachi Electric Supply Company and its crumbling distribution system infested with increasing line losses is adding to the woes of the citizens already perturbed about various other issues including the sky-rocketing prices of the essential commodities etc. There seems no end to this nightmarish condition.

The power utility is resorting to more than two hours of load-shedding at least thrice a day in many areas across the metropolis, but the KESC is unable to tell how many of its feeders had to be closed down during these outages. Insiders said that the calculation for load- shedding conducted by the privatised management of the utility was also wrong.

Apprehensions about the health of the utility have also been expressed amid reports that the CEO of the privatised KESC may be replaced for his failure to overcome the power crisis in the city.

While these reports have been denied by the KESC spokesman, though sources in the government hinted at a review of the previous government’s policies in this regard.

Meanwhile, the KESC share holders’ association has expressed concern over the financial health of the company, which they believe is “fast heading towards total bankruptcy”.

According to the general secretary of the association, Choudhry Mazhar Ali, the outstanding dues towards consumers which stood at Rs23 billion in 2006 have swelled up to Rs30 billion but no concrete efforts have been made to recover the dues.

He said that thousands of consumers had not paid their outstanding dues for the last four to five years but they continued to use electricity and unfortunately not a single notice had been sent to such consumers for the recovery of the dues.

Mr Ali claimed that as many as 200,000 consumers were on the list of those consumers whose connections had been cut off but they were using electricity in connivance with the KESC staff. He pointed out that the utility’s management had taken more than Rs47 billion as a loan by pledging the valuable properties of the company during the last two years from various banks to meet the project cost and for meeting the day-to-day expenses. He said that the company was facing a shortfall of more than Rs1 billion every month as monthly expenses had been increased to more than Rs5 billion.

A huge amount of money is being spent on the procurement of material but not being utilised properly. According to sources, 1,200 transformers of 250kva were purchased in January, which were to be installed along with the existing overloaded transformers in different parts of the city. So far, only 200 of them have been installed. Similarly more than 200 kilometers of underground HT cable, imported from China was not being used properly.

Sources said that Arial bundle cable worth Rs110 million was imported to replace the copper conductors to check the Kunda system.

The contractor who was awarded this job had allegedly got hold of the removed copper conductor worth Rs4.5 million in connivance with the KESC staff.

The office-bearer of share holder’s association was also of the view that the proposed power project of 560 megawatts at Bin Qasim was in jeopardy because the decisions in certain matters had been unnecessarily delayed.

The evaluation of this project, he said, was completed in June 2007 and the validity of the Chinese contractors was up to Feb 28, 2008. Now the contractors were not revalidating their offer and demanding an increase.