KARACHI, Sept 2: The Karachi Electric Supply Corporation has finally been able to reduce transmission and distribution losses by 3.9 per cent. In May 1999, when the army took over the KESC management, the transmission and distribution losses had stood at 38.64 per cent. Although the army took over the KESC with the stated objective of reducing the losses, it failed to do so in the first five years.

The 1999 audit report quotes the former KESC chairman, Zulfikar Ali Khan, as saying: “The present management took control of the KESC towards the end of May 1999. It was confronted with a formidable task as the existing system was nearing collapse. Since it was not possible to attend to all the problems simultaneously, the essential areas were identified. The most important issue was to overcome shortage of generation — the main cause of loadshedding. This was managed through cooperation of Wapda which not only supplied the much-needed electrical but also favoured the KESC by deferring the demand for payment for the power supplied. Keeping in view the reducing trend of losses in the first quarter, the target for losses for the whole FY 1999-2000 has been fixed at 30 per cent.”

However, the KESC could not achieve the target. According to the half-yearly accounts for the period ended Dec 31, 2004, units generated by the KESC underwent a decline of over one per cent. As a consequence, the units purchased by the KESC rose by around 12 per cent to a little less than two billion megawatts. While the KESC had around 6.5 billion megawatts available for distribution, only 4.24 billion megawatts were billed. The unbilled units (around 34.21 per cent) were those which were either line losses or consumed by power thieves.