April 05, 2008	Saturday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 27, 1429

KARACHI, April 4: Just a day after the Senate Committee on Water and Power had a half-hearted briefing session with the management of the privatised Karachi Electric Supply Company, the utility’s power generation drastically dropped for unknown reasons and forced it to opt for prolonged load-shedding on Friday.

The KESC’s power generation went down from Thursday’s 1,100MW to about 850MW on Friday. Combined with a reduced supply from other power providers, a total of 400MW shortfall caused the utility to resort to load-shedding though the KESC officials chose to keep the reasons of a drastic cut in supply secret. No KESC official was ready to admit the faults and let people know the cause of a sudden slump in generation and the rise in quantum and frequency of load-shedding.

Surprisingly, the Bin Qasim Power Plant units, which were revived several weeks after they broke down, are still not functioning properly. The Unit No 4, which was shut down for repairs in December, is running at half of its strength. Similarly, the Unit No 1 that stopped working in February and was recently revived is now producing electricity half of its capacity. Other units, too, are not running properly.

In the absence of an official announcement, people kept guessing if the repaired leakages had developed once again or if there was any other cause of the increase in frequency of outages.

Sources in the utility, however, said the utility had curtailed its own generation to cut down on the fuel cost although it was passing on the enhanced fuel adjustment charges to the consumers. Besides, they said, the situation was also compounded because of the non-availability of supplies from the DHA’s desalination plant and an outage at the Karachi Atomic and Nuclear Power Plant (Kanupp). The supply from the Korangi Thermal Power Station also remained marginal. Both Bin Qasim and KTPS are glaring examples of the KESC’s failure in the maintenance and operations of such projects.

Disgusted at the prolonged power outages several times a day, market associations have, meanwhile, warned the utility that if its service did not improve they would take to the streets and would not pay the electricity bills.