KARACHI: The K-Electric on Wednesday came under fire at the meeting of the Special Committee of the Sindh Assembly as it categorically refused to reduce the duration of loadshedding in parts of Karachi even during winter.

In a heated discussion, KE chief executive officer Moonis Alvi told the committee in clear terms that the power utility would continue to carry out loadshedding in the areas where there was electricity theft, irking the committee members.

The assembly in September had established an 11-member special committee of lawmakers to review the performance and assess the operations of the KE, Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (Hesco) and Sukkur Electric Supply Company (Sesco).

The committee was headed by Pakistan Peoples’ Party member Fayaz Ali Butt and included Leader of Opposition Ali Khurshidi, Jamaat-i-Islami’s Muhammad Farooq, PTI’s Muhammad Shabbir and Sajjad Ali; Najam Mirza and Amir Siddiqui of Muttahida Quami Movement-Pakistan, and PPP members Saleem Baloch, Yousuf Baloch, Sadia Javed and Ghulam Qadir Chandio.

Utility’s CEO tells PA lawmakers’ body loadshedding will continue in areas plagued by power theft

Talking to the media, the committee chairman said that the behaviour of the KE chief was inappropriate in the meeting as he plainly refused to reduce loadshedding.

Sources, however, said that the situation took an unpleasant turn when MQM-P MPA Amir Siddiqui exchanged hot words with the KE CEO, who paid back him in his own coin. Later, Mr Siddiqui told journalists that the power utility officials had threatened him of dire consequences as he took up the plight of people.

They said that the KE chief had conceded that there was no law to resort to loadshedding, but said that it would continue in the areas where there was power theft.

The committee chairman said that the power companies had been instructed to meet the MPAs of their respective areas. “We want to sit with the power companies and solve the problems,” he added.

Opposition Leader Ali Khurshidi told Dawn that the power utility chief was told that there was 18-hour long loadshedding in different parts of Karachi.

He said that the KE staff was involved in electricity theft and with generator mafia and the power utility was asked to take action against such elements in their ranks.

The opposition leader said that the power utility chief had assured in the previous meeting that there would be no excessive loadshedding, but the practice of prolong outages still persisted in several parts of the city.

He said that beside the scheduled loadshedding, the power supply to several areas was being turned off on daily basis on the pretext of localised faults.

“The power supply is disconnected 10 minutes after the loadshedding schedule in the name of fault,” he deplored, adding that the people would go out of control if the issues were not resolved.

The MQM leader said that the power utility chief was also requested to manage loadshedding during the timings of water supply in different areas.

“The KE CEO has agreed to partially manage the load during the water supply timings,” he added.

He also criticised the Jamaat-i-Islami member for not turning up to the special committee meeting.

Published in Dawn, December 5th, 2024