KARACHI, Dec 15: The chairman of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation, Riaz Ahmed Khan, has admitted that the recently- installed power meters have shown a rise in electricity consumption to the tune of 67 units per consumer.

Power consumers in the city, including high-ranking government functionaries, have alleged that the new KESC meters run faster than the old ones. However, over 50,000 residential and commercial units and 9,000 industrial units have received new electricity meters from the KESC. The power utility plans to replace all the 1,800,000 electricity meters in the city.

Speaking at a press conference at the KESC headquarters on Monday, Mr Khan said that on average the new meters installed in industrial areas had shown a rise in electricity consumption to the tune of 670 units per consumer.

He said that under an uplift plan, the federal government was to release Rs13 billion to the KESC over three years. “The federal government has already released Rs1 billion and Rs3 billion will be released this year. When the funds are made available, the KESC would increase its generation capacity by 133 megawatts, install 10 power transformers, establish grid stations and lay better transmission lines,” he said.

Speaking about new power generation plants, he disclosed that around 10 companies had shown interest in the project. He added that the government was aware that the growth rate in Karachi’s power demand was higher than that of other cities. He said efforts were on to make available about 1,000 megawatts to the KESC to meet the increased demand for electricity in the city.

“The Rs3 billion Hubco-KESC link project would materialize over the next two years. This project would not only prevent electric power from being dissipated in transmission lines but would also go a long way towards doing away with the power woes of Karachi,” he hoped.

Speaking about outstanding dues, the KESC managing director, Brig Tariq Saddozai, said that for the past six months the water board had been paying half of its electricity bill. “The water board owes Rs600 million to the KESC. We have served a notice upon the water board. We have also served a notice upon the Sindh government which had communicated to us through a letter that since electricity is an essential facility its supply to government offices should not be cut off.

“The KESC has fixed Dec 30 as the deadline by which the power utility is expecting that the water board would pay up. Similarly, the city government owes Rs700 million to the KESC,” he said.

He said the KESC was aware about the controversy of newly- installed electricity meters. “We will soon have a function at which we will invite elected representatives of the people and have our mobile testing vans checked by independent authorities. Then we will randomly select some new meters which will be checked by the mobile testing vans,” he said.

He explained that the replacement of old meters by news ones had been necessitated because of rampant power theft. “Under a plan we first identified those areas where power theft was more widespread. We used to shut off power supply to those areas in the peak hours. But that measure generated a great deal of resentment. We therefore decided to fight power theft by replacing old meters,” he said.