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KARACHI: The Karachi Electric Supply Company announced on Friday that it would reduce the duration of loadshedding in the city from Saturday after the Pakistan State Oil and the Sui Southern Gas Company assured it of the required fuel supply.
The KESC also announced that there would be no loadshedding during Iftar and Sehar.
It was decided to carry out loadshedding for four and a half hours in a day in those areas where power pilferage was on the rise, while loadshedding duration would be three hours in the areas where power theft was less.
The KESC would not carry out loadshedding in the industrial areas.
While people of Karachi suffered more than 10 hours of loadshedding on Friday, the top management of the KESC, SSGC and PSO met at the Governor’s House to address the long-standing issue of circular debt.
Federal Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Dr Asim Hussain, provincial Finance Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, the federal and provincial finance secretaries and the Karachi commissioner also attended the meeting, which was chaired by Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad.
Dr Asim declared that a recovery drive would be launched to address the issue of circular debt and a seven-day notice would be given to defaulters, whether government or private entities, after which their supply would be disconnected.
He said that the government could not pay a subsidy on everything due to the economic conditions, but the federal government would provide Rs2.5 billion to ensure availability of furnace oil to the KESC.
While the meeting failed to settle the issue of circular debt, the extent of power outages indicated that the power utility had taken no steps to increase its own generation.
In fact many areas of the city had been without electricity for more than 48 hours till Friday night.
The worst-affected areas were Shanti Nagar, Dalmia, Malir, Garden East, Soldier Bazaar, Buffer Zone, North Karachi, Federal B.
Area, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Nazimabad, North Nazimabad, Parsi Colony, Lyari and Keamari.
Some of the residents called upon the chief justice of Pakistan to take suo motu notice of the power utility’s failure to enhance its own generation to provide uninterrupted power supply to consumers.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the KESC thanked Dr Hussain for directing the SSGC to immediately increase the gas supply to the power utility to at least 180MMCFD (million cubic feet per day).
The spokesperson said that the KESC had reiterated its commitment to the federal minister that the utility would reduce by half current loadshedding hours as soon as the gas supply was increased to a minimum threshold of 240MMCFD.
The utility sought an immediate implementation of the recent decision of the Economic Coordination Committee of the federal cabinet to supply the allocated quota of 276MMCFD on an urgent basis and urged all stakeholders and providers of the energy sector to keep the interest of the general public supreme and consider their power requirements above individual interests, said the spokesperson.
Meanwhile, the SSGC maintained that ECC allocations were subject to signing of a gas supply agreement which the power utility was evading.
