ISLAMABAD, Aug. 27: The federal government has decided to thoroughly improve the Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation’s generation, transmission and distribution network by June 2006 at a cost of Rs13.7 billion.

Official sources told Dawn here on Wednesday that the rehabilitation work mainly included capacity restoration of generation system by 143MW, upgradation of 66KV transmission lines and grids to 132KV, installation of 8 new grids, reduction in transmission and distribution losses from 40 per cent in 2003 to 24 per cent after the completion of the project by June 2006.

The sources said that the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) in its next meeting would formally approve the KESC’s improvement programme.

A number of technical measures are proposed to be taken under the project for loss reduction, including removal of ‘kundas,’ shifting of energy meters outside the premises, installation of energy meters at transformers, realignment of under-sized distribution line, replacement of bear conductor with insulated cables, addition of 790 MVA transformation capacity, provision of SCADA system and restructuring of billing zone.

It is generally expected that with these new measures, the KESC would be able to reduce its technical and financial losses to a major extent.

Officials said that the project was of a strategic nature and any slackness in the implementation process could further deteriorate the already bad condition of transmission and distribution system. Therefore, it was necessary that the project should be monitored by the federal government on quarterly basis so that the proper track of implementation of the project could be maintained.

The KESC was expected to prepare a project implementation schedule “on micro-soft project,” software package and provide the soft copy to the Energy Wing for proper monitoring.

However, the sources said that the income statement of the company indicated that after implementation of the project, the KESC would still be in loss of nearly Rs1.5 billion. It was stated that the targets of reduction in losses from 40 per cent to 24 per cent was quite ambitious and delay in reduction of losses could affect the economics of the project.

According to officials concerned, no investment had been made in the upgradation of available infrastructure of the KESC.