HYDERABAD: It has become almost a norm that electricity will go off before or the very moment the first drop of rain lands on ground and Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (Hesco) religiously ensures it every monsoon without fail.

Satire aside, this year’s first spell of monsoon badly exposed Hesco’s performance, like it does every year. The power utility once again miserably failed to keep power supply going without any major breakdown during or after the rain.

It rained only 8mm and 12mm in the city and Latifabad, respectively, on Tuesday as per Met office figures but electricity supply remained suspended for 10-12 hours. Power breakdown was reported at 5pm, at least 2.5 hours before the moderate rainfall, and soon afterwards complaints of ‘no power supply’ kept pouring in from 13 districts under Hesco’s jurisdiction.

It has been a long time since Hesco was bifurcated into Hesco and Sepco (Sukkur Electric Supply Company) still the two failed to perform satisfactorily.

Had Sepco still been part of Hesco, the latter’s performance would have come to a naught considering size of the two regions. The utilities were plagued by complaints of exaggerated issuance of bills, fatal incidents due to poorly maintained transformers (at least two major tragedies were reported last year in Hyderabad alone in which over a dozen people lost their lives), shortage of staff and equipment, which contributed to below par performance.

Hesco is quick to share demand-supply gap to justify prolonged outages but hardly does it come up with details on investment in transmission system that remains extremely fragile. Back to back tragedies in Hyderabad last year are a case in point. Electricity dues kept piling up while the power utility was trying to recover them, often inviting ire of defaulters. “Power dues are result of collusion between defaulters and Hesco’s line staff, otherwise it is not possible without active connivance of the staff,” said a consumer.

Till May 2022, Hesco’s receivables stood at Rs131.991 billion, including Rs4.949bn from federal government, Rs12.408bn from provincial government and Rs114.633bn to be received from private consumers.

Civic agencies’ water supply and drainage systems are always worst hit by the power breakdown. “Power supply to pumping stations went off even before the first drop of rain,” said a Wasa official.

Hesco spokesman comes up with a statement that “many feeders were closed as a precautionary measure while faults also occurred at other feeders”.

As power supply goes off, Wasa management switches over to standby generators which are not as good as electricity supply, delaying drainage of rainwater in Hyderabad, Latifabad and Qasimabad.

“Ageing network is root cause of all problems [in Hesco]. Investment in system can give results alone otherwise it is useless talking about this or that thing,” commented Aslam Uqaili, former vice chancellor Mehran University of Engin­eering and Technology (MUET) and ex-member of Hesco’s board of directors (BoD).

He believes Hesco couldn’t improve its performance even after separation of Sepco region. “Hesco is only above Fata and Quetta’s power distribution companies in terms of performance,” he said.

He said that Punjab’s power distribution companies were performing relatively better. “You need will to deliver. This will is missing here,” he said.

He said that this power utility had not yet been able to put in place an able and sound management through competitive process. “A finance officer appointed through competitive process in our [BoD] era faces issues as she doesn’t find enabling environment. So, it is same old drudgery in Hesco,” he said.

Hesco’s Chief Operating Officer (COO) tried to justify the utility’s performance in answer to questions by Dawn and conceded that normalisation of power supply system did consume time. “We are trying to have more grid stations like two we have added recently,” he said, referring to Sakhi Wahab and Hyderabad bypass grid stations.

“Old city area of Hyderabad has become too congested. We don’t find space there to bifurcate feeders. It is a tricky job and we need space for having separate grid stations in the city limits to ease out load management,” he said, adding old lines were being replaced.

Published in Dawn, July 10th, 2022