KARACHI, April 20: The failure of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation to prevent unannounced and frequent daily power outages may create the possibility for many of this city’s 16 million people to loose control of their emotions and go on a rampage to protest against the utility’s failure in fulfilling its responsibility.

Most KESC consumers — a vast majority of whom live in apartments — accused the utility’s management and the government and were asking why they should pay bills when most of the time they are deprived of power and have to fall back on generators or UPS.

Load-shedding is being resorted to, to the tune of over 250 megawatts every day, despite the supply of 500 mw by WAPDA from its national grid, and that too at the expense of many rural areas. KESC’s own dwindling power generation is less than 900 mw, while the peak demand is at about 2200 mw.

The KESC management’s attempt to pass on the responsibility to WAPDA has been questioned and the utility’s management has been blamed for all the ills. A high-level meeting of the federal Water and Power Ministry has been planned to discuss the problems of the KESC and ensure uninterrupted supply.

But sources in the KESC said that unless responsibility was fixed and political patronage of certain elements was withdrawn, very soon hardly any power supply would be available.

Sources in the KESC also confirmed this because according to them, the management had not invested in either the power generation or its distribution system. The general consensus was that the utility’s management -- especially since military personnel had taken over -- had done nothing to improve the generation or distribution system.

Representatives of KESC workers believe that privatisation of the utility was the root of the problem. They point out that when the utility was privatised -- despite people’s opposition -- the new management had promised to invest $500 million, but had not kept its promise.

Sources in the KESC also blamed Siemens Pakistan for not solving the problem, despite being responsible for the operations of the utility. They questioned Siemens’ claim about the efforts undertaken to suggest policies to bring KESC departments in line with international practices, as well as the statement that it had helped in the utility’s privatisation in the national interest.