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KARACHI, Aug 10: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Friday expressed serious concern over the continuing energy crisis in the city and directed the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation to honour its contractual obligations for power generation and supply to meet the immediate and future needs of the city.
Mr Aziz, according to official sources, said this in a high-level meeting he chaired at the Governor’s House on the day when the Bin Qasim Power Plant’s unit no. 4 was not operating, both units of the KTPS were closed, and Kanupp was out since Thursday night, causing more than 250 megawatts of load-shedding when consumption during the day was 1,400 megawatts.
The prime minister’s remarks came amid reports of serious criticism of the new privatised management’s failure to fulfil its contractual commitment to invest in generation, transmission and distribution. The power outages have also created a serious water shortage in the city.
As the KESC failed to rectify most of the faults in its distribution network and generation system, Mr Aziz called for better coordination between the utility and the city government and all the departments concerned for improving the transmission and distribution system.
Amid complains of average and inflated billing by the utility, the prime minister underscored the need for improving the billing system for reducing the possibility of inaccuracy.
Despite mounting public complaints of the KESC’s failure to attend to cable and other faults, Mr Aziz was nevertheless appreciative of the efforts made by the utility and the city government workers after the storm that hit Karachi and the coastal areas in the recent past and also during the current spell of rain for what he called “ensuring the supply of electricity to the people of Karachi.”
The KESC Managing Director Lt-Gen (retd) Amjad gave a briefing to the PM on the prevailing electricity scenario and the utility’s future plans for enhancing generation capacity.
He said that 80 megawatts power would be added to the utility’s capacity this October while another 180 megawatts would be added in March 2008 to meet the average shortage of power, estimated to be between 250-300 megawatts.
He said the KESC was contemplating opting for rental power projects to overcome the immediate generation shortage for the future needs of Karachi. It may be pointed out that the special committee instituted on the directives of the prime minister had also recommended this measure.
The oft-repeated plans for setting up 12 grid stations in the city were referred to in the meeting by the KESC chief, although the utility has not been able to acquire the necessary land for all the planned grid stations.
The plans have hit snags when some litigants claimed ownership of the plots for which the KESC had already made payments to the revenue department.
He also claimed that over 376km of new transmission lines and cables would be added to the system in the next four months.
The meeting was attended by Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad, Federal Minister for Ports and Shipping Babar Khan Ghouri, Minister of State for Information Senator Tariq Azim and other high officials of the KESC.
Meanwhile, widespread and prolonged power outages and disruption of the KESC’s generation and distribution system persisted on Friday as the utility failed to take any corrective rain emergency measures.
Residents of Malir complained there was no electricity in their area since 5pm on Thursday. Their main grievance was that the KESC complaint centre staff was not attending calls on 118 and other numbers.
Power outages and unattended faults were also reported from Buffer Zone’s Sector 15 A, North Karachi’s Block 3, Pak Colony, Federal B Area, Baldia, Orangi, Banaras, Gulshan-i-Iqbal’s Block 13-B, Landhi, Korangi and Gulistan-i-Jauhar Block-17.
A vast area of the city was without electricity for more than 24 hours as the KESC could not attend to the so-called cable faults and a leakage in the boiler of Bin Qasim’s unit no. 4.
Widespread tripping was also reported from across the city while there was no evidence of the KESC staff attending to the problems.
