September 12, 2008	Friday	Ramazan 11, 1429

KARACHI, Sept 11: As the mercury surged to 41.5 Celsius with 23 per cent humidity on Thursday, Karachiites suffered yet another hot day of prolonged power outages as the Karachi Electric Supply Company resorted to load-shedding of over 560MW, primarily to cut down its fuel cost, in total disregard to consumer needs.

Extensive load-shedding continues despite the assurances given by a KESC representative to the speaker of the Sindh assembly, Nisar Khuhro, and ruling party’s former senator Taj Haider in a briefing that there would be no load-shedding after Sept 5.

While KESC’s own generation facilities were operating much below the installed capacity, owing to lack of maintenance, the utility’s management was not acquiring energy from the IPPs, Gul Ahmad and Tapal, to fill in the void and provide uninterrupted energy to consumers.

While the demand was for 2,400MW, the utility was able to supply only over 1,700MW, including 540MW, provided by Wapda.

Inquiries showed that despite being aware of the plight of domestic as well as commercial and industrial consumers, the management did not fall back on the IPPs to save Karachiites from prolonged load-shedding. It was only falling back on the IPPs to meet the Sehri and Iftar time demand, and that too under government instructions.

When Dawn asked Mr Haider why the intensity of load-shedding had increased despite his disclosure that things would improve by Sept 4, he said the management of the KESC had committed a “moral and social crime” by not using the 225MW electricity available in the private sector and subjecting the people to prolonged outages, which also had terrible consequences for business and industry.

He said the KESC management had given them assurances of significant improvement by Sept 4, though if everything remained all right, there would still be a demand-supply gap of 200/250 MW. That meant that there should be no more than two-hour load-shedding daily.

There was no justification for the prolonged outages when the utility was getting its required supply of gas from the SSGC.

Meanwhile, there are reports that a team of KESC engineers have gone to Tanzania to examine generators which the utility wants to acquire on a rental basis from Dubai-based M/s Agrico. “The KESC has effected a deal with the company for hiring 58 generators of one megawatt each,” said general secretary of the KESC Shareholder’s Association Choudhry Mazhar. Electricity from this facility would cost 5.08 cents per KW. The KESC would bear the transport cost of the generators from Tanzania to Pakistan, he said.

Aljomaih’s representative Shan Ashary had informed the ruling party’s representatives last month that the KESC was bringing in rental plants (truck mounted units of 4MW each). There will be 12 such units and the first will begin operating in October.