KARACHI: The causes of country-wide blackouts and brownouts and their remedies were discussed during a panel discussion among senior engineers during the 30th multi-topic international symposium-2015 organised by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Pakistan (IEEEP) at a local hotel here on Thursday.

A heated brainstorming session ensued when senior engineers from audience namely Engr Mano Ram, a former senior engineer of Wapda; Abu Adil, former CEO of Genco-1 who also worked for KESC for a few years and Engr Asif Siddiqui, chairman of IEEEP Karachi centre, joined in.

According to Engr Mano Ram, problems can definitely be remedied if there is cooperation between the K-Electric and the National Transmission And Despatch Company and technocrats are listened to.

“Proper facilities also need to be provided at generating plants,” he said. “There should be no politics in engineering,” he added.

Engr Asif Siddiqui was of the opinion that the basic job of the government was to govern and production and distribution of the electricity should be left to the private sector so that it was free from political influence.

Abu Adil said that the basic problem was that the imbalance between demand and supply. “The demand is more and supply less,” he said.

The pros and cons of privatisation were also discussed. Engr G.R. Bhatti was of the view that privatisation was not the answer to electricity woes and the model being referred to as a ‘successful’ was not really a successful model.

“Actually the only privatised distribution company has not invested anything, but has taken loans from the International Monetary Fund and other agencies and if it doesn’t do that the people of Karachi would have to pay for it,” he said.

“Those sitting in the utilities are incompetent. Those who have authority are non-technical and those who possess technical knowledge don’t have authority.”

The debate concluded on the note that solutions cannot possibly be found in a simple panel discussion and a committee be formed to discuss the issue further and send its recommendations to the relevant authorities.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2015

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