December 31, 2008	Wednesday	Muharram 02,1430

KARACHI, Dec 30: Enraged KESC consumers are planning to surround the offices and installations of the Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation in the coming days to protest against the utility’s failure to provide uninterrupted electricity and its increase in power tariffs, sources and irate callers told Dawn on Tuesday.

Several civil society organisations and small traders are currently contemplating their strategy for forcing the government to intervene in the matter and compel the KESC to fulfil its contractual obligations. Several meetings of both the business community and civil society members have been held in this regard already.

Tuesday saw no respite from power outages for consumers as the KESC generated just 430MW from its own plants, and Wapda provided an additional 650MW at the expense of consumers in other parts of the country.

Residents complained that the KESC had extended the duration of load-shedding to two hours in many areas, with spells being separated by just an hour of power being supplied. KESC authorities termed the outages a result of feeder tripping. According to sources, over 100 overloaded KESC feeders are being switched off for two hours, in rotation after every hour, on the pretext of ‘tripping’.

The sources maintained that the KESC management’s decision to operate its plants below capacity was also causing under-frequency in its own system.

Further, the sources slammed the government for not intervening as custodian of the rights of the people who were suffering at the hands of foreign private management.

Tuesday say the power deficit hit 400MW, as the KESC management refused to invest in the company to purchase fuel for the Bin Qasim and other plants. Three of the six units at the Bin Qasim plant were not operational on Tuesday, two due to a lack of money to pay for furnace oil.

Meanwhile, political parties and the general public blamed the PPP-led government for the power crisis, and expressed serious concern over the prolonged spells of load-shedding this winter. Citizens are fearing that the summer will be even worse, in terms of load-shedding.

Consumers have also slammed the government for the increase in power tariffs, despite the fact that the price of furnace oil has gone down in the international market. They were of the view that citizens have lost the most due to the privatisation of the KESC.

Consumer body to be set up

The Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) is to set up an external governance council which will have public and major stakeholders’ representation.

The new chief executive officer of the KESC, Naveed Ismail, has approach major stakeholders and bulk consumers of electricity, requesting them to join the council for building a sustained and powerful two-way relationship between the power utility and people of the city.

The council would have 40 members from a cross section of society and would work independently.

It would act as a representative body of stakeholders and public, and would give guidance regularly to the KESC management for improving its service to customers.

The members of the council would be further divided into generation, transmission, distribution and industrial relations’ think tanks.

These small forums would ensure interactive debate in each meeting, followed by a combined meeting to reach a common solution to problems and issues raised by stakeholders.

The KESC governance council would meet once in a month and after consultations it would try to sort out issues in the larger interest of consumers.

The CEO of the KESC, Naveed Ismail, has also informed stakeholders about a turnaround strategy for the power utility and said that after pin pointing challenges confronting the KESC, a plan has been put in place to remove all such deficiencies.