August 29, 2008	Friday	Sha'aban 26, 1429

KARACHI, Aug 28: As Karachiites continued to suffer prolonged power outages and the KESC suffered a shortage of about 600MW amid the overall demand of 2,200MW on Thursday, the top management of the KESC was missing from the office when Sindh Assembly Speaker Nisar Khuhro and PPP leader Taj Haider visited the utility’s headquarters.

“Enough is enough,” said the speaker when he found no one from the top management in the office when the city was braving another day of power crisis. They said the persistent power crisis could not be overlooked because it affected the public as well as industrial and business activity in the city.

Taj Haider said that when there was a sufficient generation capacity why it was not being utilised and why the people were being made to suffer load-shedding. Both PPP leaders wanted to know what the utility’s management had done to implement the recommendations of the appraisal committee set by the prime minister last year to improve KESC functioning. They wanted to know the reasons for the power outages and there was no one to explain to the representatives of the ruling party. Finally, some representatives of the foreign managers arrived there and it was decided that they would brief Mr Khuhro and Mr Haider at 3pm on Friday.

Meanwhile, City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal also expressed deep concern over the power crisis in city and asked the KESC officials to take tangible measures and save the citizens from the agony.

In a statement, he observed that the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation had never made any serious attempt to improve the power supply situation in Karachi.

He said Karachi was facing 700 to 800 megawatts of load-shedding, which had not only adversely affected the routine life in the city but had also caused people to suffer financial losses. He regretted that the KESC was still unable to overcome the crisis.

He also deplored that an important agency considered to be the lifeline of the city had been working without any head for more than two months.

In a statement, Atiq Mir, chairman of the Alliance of Market Associations Karachi, said: “In the past five years, I had never seen such bad situation of power supply as it has been during the current month”. He added that no one in the government was bothered to find out why the citizens were facing this problem.

The Karachi president of the All Pakistan Organisation of Small Traders and Cottage Industries, Mahmood Hamid, said that during business hours, in all power supply was available for a maximum of two-and-a-half hours, which was too short to meet the target of production by the small industrial units.

The Bin Qasim Thermal Plant of the KESC could not go beyond generating 670MW in the last 24 hours instead of the desired 1160MW. There has been no power generation from the Defence Cogen plant, the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant, and the Korangi Gas Turbines.

One unit of the Korangi Thermal Plant of the KESC has been dysfunctional for the last couple of days while the rest of the generation units of the Korangi plant has been producing 80MW electricity instead of its usual 160MW.