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KARACHI, Aug 13: While many city areas remained without electricity due to the KESC’s failure to rectify the faults developed during the rains on Aug 9 and Aug 10, the utility resorted to enforcing its load-shedding programme on a rotation basis to overcome a shortfall of 150 megawatts in power generation on Sunday night and Monday.
The shortfall has apparently been caused by the continued closure of the Bin Qasim Power Plant’s Unit-4, and Korangi Thermal Power Station’s both units. Although the broken down units are undergoing repairs, there has been no explanation from the KESC about the delay in completing the work. The KESC chief executive officer has, however, maintained that the utility was working on some long-term projects aimed at increasing its power generation capacity and strengthening the transmission and distribution system.
A spokesman for the KESC on Monday claimed that repair of all the faults developed during the recent rains had been completed by Sunday night. However, he added, KESC staff was making all out efforts to attend to the routine local faults.
Contrary to his claim, residents of Defence, Clifton , Lyari, Shah Faisal Colony, Malir, Landhi, Korangi, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Nazimabad, North Nazimabad, Federal B Area, North and New Karachi, Baldia and Orangi, besides the localities falling beyond UP Morr complained that they were still without electricity and that no KESC staff had turned up to detect the faults and restore electricity.
Many frustrated and outraged consumers among them said the KESC management should be penalised for causing heavy losses to them by suspending power supply for many hours at a stretch several times a day, pointing out that the situation had not only been creating problems and inconvenience, but has affecting their business badly.
The proposed increase in power tariff proposed by the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) has strongly been criticised by the businessman community and industrialists, who termed the recommendation “patronisation of the KESC’s inefficiency.
“Allowing the KESC to increase tantamount to rewarding KESC for its inefficiency and that, too, at the cost of the interests of domestic consumers in general and industries in particular,” said Saboor Ahmed, Chairman of the Karachi Chamber of Commerce & Industry’s Subcommittee on Power and Gas.
Nepra has reportedly allowed the power utility to increase the tariff for its consumers by 29 paisa per kilowatt hour.
Mr Ahmed said here on Monday that “electricity accounted for a major portion of production cost of our industry which, under the present WTO regime where the maxim of fittest of survival prevails, is already facing difficulty in competing with the foreign products, both in global as well as domestic markets. Any increase in power tariff will further erode its competitive edge. Therefore, the need for all such policy measures which will enable our industry to meet this challenge, has become all the more compelling, and the reduction in the cost of energy is one such critically important issue.”
He lamented that instead of ensuring availability of electricity at affordable rates and taking long-term corrective measures well in time to meet the gap of 466 megawatts between the demand and supply, the KESC always opted for increasing power tariff. He observed that transmission and distribution (T&D) losses had increased to 34.1 per cent in 2006-07 from 33.5 per cent in 2005-06 but no serious efforts to contain the situation were being made.
