August 31, 2008	Sunday	Sha'aban 28, 1429

KARACHI, Aug 30: After Friday’s intervention by the ruling party in KESC matters, the utility’s foreign managers pushed up generation at the Bin Qasim Power Plant, probably by using furnace oil, to calm the growing outrage of the people.

However, many areas were still without electricity for several hours but nobody from the KESC was coming to the rescue of the consumers, nor were they attending to the so-called faults.

On Saturday, the BQPL was generating a little over 700MW, whereas the SITE gas turbine was churning out 35MW, the Korangi gas turbine 17MW and the KTPS was giving 80MW. With the revival of power supply of about 77MW from the DCL to the KESC, and availability of electricity from two IPPs (Tapal 113MW and Gul Ahmad 112MW), the quantum of shortage was at about 400MW.

But there was no respite from load-shedding though the owners of the company had assured the ruling party representatives that by Sept 6 load-shedding would be reduced to the minimum and the situation would further ease when 1,000MW more were added to the system in the years ahead.

Insiders told Dawn that assurances given by Al Jomaih’s representatives to the ruling party team were just a ploy to distract attention from their failure to improve the generation, transmission and distribution capacity.

They alleged that the private managers siphoned out huge amounts of money and mortgaged the utility’s assets, and did not invest in its improvement despite very strong recommendations for it by the special appraisal committee set up in July last year to find out the causes and suggest measures for its improvement.

While making recommendations for the improvement of the KESC transmission and grid network, the committee had noted “that KESC sustained tremendous financial loss besides customers’ annoyance on account of unnecessary breakdowns of supply and damaging of grid stations / transformers etc, merely due to poor maintenance and lack of knowledge. Following factors, if controlled, can contribute towards better safety of the system besides ensuring uninterrupted power supply to the consumers.”

The committee had also recommended that earthing should be checked periodically for integrity / healthiness and proper and prompt action taken in case of unsatisfactory results. This was not done by the foreign management despite public protests and government rhetoric. There was also no checking / testing of grid stations equipment frequently while in service operation.