ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee on Water and Power, on Friday, slammed K-Electric and the Sindh government for failing to prevent the deaths caused by a heatwave that hit Karachi recently.

“An inquiry should be held to [establish] the causes of causalities in Karachi, because we did not see the national or provincial disaster management authorities or K- Electric playing an active role,” Senator Nauman Wazir Khatak said.

He was quick to add, however, “The most important role should have been played by the Sindh government.”

“We hear that Edhi is managing the mortuary and that hospitals have run out of room, but where is the provincial government,” he asked.

However, most members of the committee criticised K-Electric – the private power company that manages Karachi’s power supply – for prolonged loadshedding at a time when the city was experiencing a severe heatwave.

Chaired by Senator Iqbal Zafar Jhagra, the committee also blamed the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) for failing to initiate action against electricity companies, with particular reference to K-Electric.

On his part, Nepra Chairman Tariq Sadozai told the senators that various actions taken against K-Electric by the authority had been challenged by the electricity company before courts and were still pending adjudication.

“We issued show-cause notices against K-Electric for under-utilising their generation capacity, but over the past three years, we have been restrained by the courts from proceeding further,” he said, adding, “Another show-cause related to violation of the power purchase agreement is also pending in court.”

Referring back to the recent crisis in Karachi, he said K-Electric tried to manage the load, but despite their efforts, many areas still faced power outages between 24 hours and 96 hours long.

“Our findings show that out of a generation capacity of 1,822MW, K-Electric has been producing 1,550MW since the beginning of Ramazan. This nearly as much as they can produce,” Mr Sadozai said.

The committee was told that K-Electric had a total installed generation capacity of 2,816MW, which includes 1,822MW from its own resources and 994MW which it obtains from IPPs and the government.

“With the constant supply of 650MW from the National Transmission and Distribution Company (NTDC), K-Electric was supplying around 2,478 MW in those days, but still there was a 400MW shortfall,” he added.

He criticised K-Electric for failing to adopt a contingency plan instead of the routine high-loss and zero-loss distribution system.

“They should have implemented a four-hour average loadshedding, but according to our team, some areas of Karachi faced prolonged outages mainly because the distribution system started tripping when the supply reached around 2,700 MW,” he said.

Nepra chairman said that in spite of loadshedding, tripping, accidents, sabotage or riots, the public had to face power cuts for long hours, even in zero-loss areas.

“We know that K-Electric has efficient plants, but there was no gas supply as they do not have a gas-supply agreement with Sui Southern,” he said, adding that these issued were mainly the domain of the Water and Power ministry.

The committee was told that the five-year agreement between the government and K-Electric expired in January 2015, and despite several notes written to both the ministry and K-Electric, nothing has been done in six months.

Some committee members also alleged that K-Electric did not meet its commitment of investing in enhancing power generation, which was ruled out by K-Electric officials on the basis that they had added 1,037MW by installing four power plants.

K-Electric CEO Tayyab Tareen denied that there was prolonged loadshedding, saying that there were technical faults in certain areas, which were addressed. However, he told the committee that K-Electric teams were stopped from fixing the faults in some areas.

He said that K-electric had invested $1.2 billion in the power generation and distribution system, adding that they had managed to cut losses from 40 to 23 per cent.

But while the K-Electric CEO boasted of his company’s performance, Senator Taj Haider assailed the policy of loadshedding based on the amount of recovery from an area.

“This is a violation of the law – you can take action against non-payers and defaulters, but you cannot penalise those paying bills in that area based on a system of collective punishment. Are we living in a tribal society,” he asked.

The other main issue pointed out by Senator Taj Haider was worsening relations between K-Electric management and its workers, saying that if they wanted to improve efficiency, then they needed to have cordial relations with their workers.

“You cannot run a utility company from laptops – there have to be technical workers who know field work,” he said.

Senator Haider even said that the three board members of K-Electric, appointed by the government, should be technical experts. “You appoint joint secretaries who only know how to handle files.”

Published in Dawn, July 4th, 2015

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