KARACHI, June 24: The Pakistan People’s Party has opposed the privatization of the KESC and has called for building new power plants and giving meters free of cost and lifting ban on trade union activities.

This was spelt out by the PPP information secretary, Taj Haider, at a news conference at the Karachi Press Club on Monday. He was accompanied by Lateef Mughal, general secretary, Peoples’ Workers Unity, KESC.

He said that whole-sale privatization had proved a disaster as more than 90 per cent privatized units have closed down. He said the real management crisis was in the private sector where thousands of industrial units have been shut down.

Mr Haider said off-loading of 74 per cent of the shares when the market is bearish and the KESC losses were skyrocketing, was the worst possible method of privatization.

He apprehended that the tariff would go up by 45 per cent and over the next three years staff would gradually be reduced.

The PPP information secretary said that the whole blame for the rising tariff had been put on the PPP’s decision to put up the IPPs. But now the government was itself privatising the public sector company.

Explaining the raison d’etre for the PPP’s IPP policy, he said that presently the transmission and distribution losses of the KESC were touching a whooping 43 per cent and pointed out that every percentage point meant yearly loss of Rs500 million.

His contention was that if there were 1.8 million KESC consumers in consideration, the number of employees, according to international standards should be 16,000 personnel.

These were at the level of 14,000 in 1988 when the KESC had 0.8 million consumer level. Now this number has been reduced to 9,500. He said the salaries of employees account for only 2 per cent of the total expenditure of the KESC, yet they were being retrenched.

The outstanding amount of the KESC has increased from Rs18 billion to 23.5 billion during the period of army takeover of the utility. The number of Kundas have gone up from 400,000 to 500,000.

Mr Haider claimed that electricity from WAPDA was proving costlier that the IPP for the KESC and reiterated the PPP’s old suggestion of having 1000 MW power generation station at West Wharf and 400 MW at SITE.

He also emphasised the needed for a provincial electricity generation and distribution company under Article 157 of the constitution.