ISLAMABAD: The Karachi Electricity Supply Company (now renamed as the K-Electric), which is often criticised in parliament for violating terms and conditions of an agreement it made with government at the time of the organisation’s purchase, has been paid Rs312 billion over the past eight years in the name of tariff differential, the Senate was informed on Tuesday.

According to statistics shared with the house, Rs228 billion had been paid to KESC over the past four years, with an all-time high payment of Rs84 billion made to the organisation last year. Even during the current year, Rs53 billion was paid to the KESC (K-Electric), the minister said.

Minister of State for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali, during the question hour, informed the house that government considered the agreement made with the KESC to be illegal and it had already challenged it in the Sindh High Court.

He said that the KESC owed Rs32.79 billion to the government and that the government had asked the KESC to immediately pay Rs17 billion it owed to the government.

The minister said that the government was making efforts to bridge the increasing gap between supply and demand of power and for this purpose it had launched several small energy projects of 50 mega watts each which would be completed in 18 months.

Senator Mohsin Leghari observed that technical losses had increased by 17 per cent. Col retired Tahir Mashahdi was of the view that statistics provided by the government indicated that power shortfall would reach 15000 mega watts till the expiry of the government’s term. “What kind of policy is this,” he asked.

The minister said that he did not want to indulge in any controversy as to who was responsible for the power shortfall, and confined himself to saying that measures were being taken by the government to increase the power generation.

Answering another question, Mr Ali said that Rs500 million was allocated in the PSDP 2014-15 for construction of 20 small dams in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, but just Rs100 million had been released so far for the purpose.

He said that of these 20 dams, four dams had already been completed while four others would be completed by December this year. The minister said that work on the Dasu dam would be started soon. He said that funds had also been released for acquisition of land for the Diamer Basha dam.

Similarly, he said, that 2,800MW of power would be generated from Tarbela 4th and Tarbela 5th extension projects which would be completed in the next three years. He said that planning was also on the card to add 2,000MW electricity to the national grid system through gas power plants. Under the proposed plan, several power plants of 50MW having a total of 2,000MW capacity would be set up, he said.

In reply to a question, Mr Ali said that the government had made a hefty allocation to upgrade power transmission lines as the existing system could not afford the load of more than 16,000 MW.

The minister said that under the long-term strategy, the government was working on various hydropower projects of 19,951MW which included 969MW Neelum Jehlum, 4500MW Diamer Basha Dam, Tarbela 4th extension 1410 MW, 106 MW Golan Gole, 4320 MW Dasu and 7100 MW Bunji dam.

Published in Dawn, October 22nd, 2014