KARACHI, June 6: While the management of the Karachi Electric Supply Company continues to accuse its protesting employees of damaging KESC assets, representatives of the workers union have demanded a high-level inquiry to verify the management’s claims and “a dangerous game of putting the onus of the crisis on the workers”.
General Secretary of the KESC’s People’s Workers Union Lateef Mughal alleged on Monday that the management itself was indulging in “sabotage activities” to malign the workers unions as had been “proved” by their allegations against the unions that “miscreants” had attacked the Clifton grid station on June 3 during a strike, and they closed 27 feeders, including the one feeding the Bilawal House.
He claimed that no such incident had happened and, according to him, the local police were witness to it. He claimed that the management had itself closed the feeders and blamed the unions to mislead the government and the public.
The PWU demanded a high-level probe into the Clifton grid station incident.
He also asked the government to order the KESC management to release details of the fuel and electricity purchased by it. He criticised the modus operandi of the private owners of the KESC for shifting the responsibility of the current electricity crisis on the unions.
Mr Mughal alleged that the “private owners have shut down the power plants running on furnace oil since they took over in 2008 and are depending on electricity generated from gas, which is cheaper”.
In a press statement issued here, Mr Mughal said the private owners had purchased furnace oil on subsidised rates by “blackmailing” the government and extorting billions of rupees from the federal government as a subsidy in the name of the Karachiites.
Payments were not being made to the PSO, SSGC, and IPPs and despite getting all incentives from the government the KESC was not passing on the benefits to the consumers. Instead, the private owners were creating an artificial power crisis to bring misery to the people and harm industrial and commercial activities in Karachi.
The KESC on Monday expressed alarm over the fire incident in a substation in Lyari and said that the “union miscreants were destroying the city’s electricity network”.
The technical factors of the burnt substation had clearly established the fact that it was an act of sabotage by “internal elements”, the KESC spokesperson claimed.
He alleged that early on Monday morning an assistant engineer of the utility was kidnapped by union activists with his motorbike while he was carrying out operational work of the tripped feeder of the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases.
The KESC also condemned the targeted killing of one of its senior officials, retired colonel Muhammad Ali Saqi, who was an integral part of the KESC’s security department. “His target killing would adversely affect our efforts to eradicate the menace of corruption within KESC ranks,” said the spokesperson.
The KESC urged the government to take a serious notice of this extreme act of terrorism.