KARACHI, Nov 3: The Karachi Electric Supply Corporation has prescribed rules for electrification of the city commercial and housing projects, preventing unscrupulous builders from running away leaving the building structures without proper individual connections, says a press release.

The press release, quoting a KESC spokesman, said that during the last decade mushroom growth of commercial and housing complexes in the name of low-cost housing had made it a common practice for some of the deceitful developers to hand over the flats and shops to the buyers and disappear, giving them electrical connections through temporary load provided by the KESC only till the completion of the construction work.

The spokesman said that the electricity tariff of the TL meter was also higher than domestic tariff; hence many of the builder-abandoned buildings have huge outstanding electricity bills. “During the last disconnection drive, the power supply connections of the defaulting projects were disconnected, the occupants of such projects approached the KESC and informed that the builder had run away and they were suffering due to power cut. The KESC restored the power on humanitarian grounds on the assurance that the occupants would clear the arrears and regularize the connections.”

He said: “The KESC has also regularized the connections of some of these builder-abandoned projects with the cooperation of the occupants and their associations. The biggest in the recent past was Karson Complex with 450 individual residential connections while work on Moon Arcade in Malir and The Plaza at Sharea Faisal is in progress.”

He added that currently out of the 460 TL connections allowed for construction projects, 204 connections of unoccupied complexes where the builder has disappeared or has not fulfilled the requirements for safe power connections stand disconnected.

“Under the prescribed rules, the builder will now have to ensure proper electrification of the project on completion as KESC has already started vigilant monitoring of these Temporary Line (TL) connections.”

The spokesman said that the KESC management had also suggested ‘Public Utility Board’ in Karachi, like other big cities of Asia, for coordination among civic agencies and assessment of infrastructure and preparation of the city master plan for reliable services.

He said that the actual electricity demand of the city was 2500 MW. “Many of the big industrial units are meeting their requirements of 400 MW through self-generation, while 250 MW power load demand is pending with the KESC. The city is at the moment being supplied 1850 MW by importing 500—600 MW from Wapda.”

He said the government was keenly pursuing the privatization of the KESC with the understanding that the new investor will initially invest in the system.

However, due to the present local circumstances, the foreign investor may take some time to finalize the privatization process. Till the completion of the privatization programme the KESC management has submitted to the government an interim ‘Action Plan for Karachi Power Supply Improvement’, which is likely to be approved, the spokesman added.

He said under the plan, the KESC would improve and augment the power generation, transmission and distribution system to the specific needs of the people of Karachi.

“As for the fresh load demand by the builders for their newly-allotted lands by the Board of Revenue on the Superhighway, Malir Development Authority area, Hawkesbay and Defence, the KESC will take up the provision of electrification on a sound planning and with an adequate system development, keeping in mind the future projection of power consumption in each area in order to avoid breakdowns and frequent faults due to overloading of the power supply system.”