KARACHI, July 3: The new management of Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) has expressed its helplessness in providing any immediate relief to the harassed citizens of Karachi as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Frank Scherschmidt announced on Monday, “We are not in a position to bring any magical change at the moment”.
His only word of consolation was the promise of 100 megawatt (mw) additional power supply from Wapda, which will ”reduce our misery at least by half.” The city, he bluntly pointed out, suffers a chronic shortage of 1,000 mw as average demand has increased to 2,200 to 2,300 mw against generation of 1,150 to 1,250 mw. He was addressing a press conference on Monday after about seven months of the company’s takeover. The KESC CEO was assisted in his press briefing by Mr Suhail Wajahat, the chief executive of the German giant multi-national Siemens. Siemens is the technical and operating partner of the privatised KESC. The two corporate leaders did not offer any immediate solution but said that they were involved in short term and long term improvement plans to bring down miseries of the people. They said the new management had invested $60 million in improvement of the systems and more work is being done.
Under the short term plan, the KESC CEO said the work will begin from September next and continue till next April to bring some relief. The long-term plan will address the rising electric demand of 7 to 10 per cent every year and he announced, “We will be doubling the whole of KESC in term of power generation, transmission, distribution and human resources.” By the year 2015 he assured KESC’s power generation capacity will be 4,400 mw.
“The new owners are fully aware of this development and will be continuously investing every year to steadily upgrade the system for more generation, improved transmission, distribution and better customer service,” he said. Right now this summer, the KESC CEO said, actions are being taken to “halt further deterioration of power supply network and increase efficiency of operation and maintenance”.
Conceding that there are incidents of sabotage in power supply he said that it had put the lives of staff members of the KESC at stake.a
The Siemens chief executive Suhail Wajahat said that about 200 mw generation will be increased before next summer by way of upgradation in Bin Qasim complex. Next month, he said, improvement will be made in Bin Qasim-5 to increase 60 mw generation followed by similar improvement in Bin Qasim-3 in November and in Bin Qasim-4 in February next year. The high pressure heaters will be rehabilitated in Bin Qasim 3, 4 and 5 to further increase their efficiency.