DAWN.COM | Sindh | Prolonged power cuts as KESC system collapses AAH
KARACHI: Electricity consumers across the city suffered immensely as the KESC generation and transmission system collapsed on Tuesday owing to the negligence of the management of the utility that has reportedly suffered a loss of Rs98 billion during the last seven days.
**The utility’s generation has dropped to such a dangerous level that most consumers were getting power supply for one hour after three hours. **Some areas might be getting electricity for more hours either due to negligence of the load-dispatch centre or for being hooked to the VIP feeders. There is no one to monitor the load-dispatch management.
**The utility was getting 500MW from Pepco, to which it has to pay a huge amount, while getting about 210MW from other independent power producers.
The major reasons of the shortfall of electricity were non-functioning of units 1 and 4 of the Bin Qasim thermal power plant and unit 4 of the Korangi power thermal station, a short supply from the Defence desalination plant, and non-availability of around 80MW power supply from the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant since Aug 22.
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On Tuesday, the BQTPS was generating between 500MW and 600MW while the Korangi thermal power station was giving 80MW electricity.
The government seems to be unconcerned about the menacing problem and threat to the country’s economy as there seems to be no intervention from its side to protect the consumers. The only intervention has been to the advantage of the privatised management in the form of an increase in tariff.
Amid looming power riots, traders have slammed the callous and indifferent attitude of elected representatives of Karachi and threatened to take over KESC offices if load-shedding was not stopped immediately.
While the demand was for over 2,200MW, the KESC on its own was generating a little over 600MW owing to the closure of many units in what has become a routine. Many of its transformers, which had developed some trouble and had become idle, have not been activated because no one seems to be taking an interest in their repairs.
**According to sources, the KESC management was closing down different units everyday to blackmail the government into enhancing tariff, and to pay its outstanding dues to the gas and oil companies and Pepco and Wapda. **Representatives of the All Pakistan Association of Small Traders and Cottage Industries, the Karachi chapter, slammed the ‘corrupt and incompetent’ management of the KESC for the closure of generating units to blackmail the government and harass the people, who are also being subjected to inflated bills.
President of the association Mahmood Hamid and others demanded that the KESC’s privatisation should be scrapped immediately as the management had failed to fulfil its obligations, and called for ending the monopoly of electricity distribution utility.
They said the closure of power supply for more than 12 hours had ruined business and industry and had forced people to spend sleepless nights.
They alleged that the foreign management of the utility was crippling Pakistan’s economy according to a conspiracy against the country. The growing power outages had also resulted in unemployment, they said, adding that about Rs14 billion was lost in a day’s strike and the utility was doing just that by resorting to load-shedding
Traders’ representatives also slammed the move to increase tariff by four rupees more and also expressed concern over the handing over of the company to M/s Abaraj of Dubai. They called for the immediate investigation into the financial irregularities of the utility and reasons for not using furnace oil and overusing the gas option.
The question was also raised that when the utility was using gas, a cheaper mode of generation, why the consumers were being subjected to hefty bills based on furnace oil.
Ms Khalid of Khyaban-i-Nishat said that for the last one week she had been experiencing load-shedding for two hours after every two hours.
Residents of block 13-D, 5, and 1 of Gulshan-i-Iqbal said that in eight hours since Tuesday morning they had suffered six to seven times disruption of power supply.
Saba Zulfiqar, a resident of Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Block 2, said the day before yesterday a refrigerator in her house went out of order and on Tuesday she lost her electric iron due to frequent disruption in electric supply. She said the electric oven of her house had also not been working and she suspected that it had also become non-functional due to the highly precarious power supply situation.
The crisis continues! So what is it? Is it KESC blackmailing govt? Or KESC failing to produce power? Who is responsible for maintaing tranformers?
Shouldn’t some inquiry be setup to resolve the matter?
