May 07, 2008	Wednesday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1, 1429

KARACHI, May 6: With the temperature rising to 34.5 degrees centigrade on Tuesday, the city’s electricity demand crossed the 2,200-megawatt limit and the Karachi Electric Supply Company resorted to carrying out prolonged load-shedding at least three times a day.

The KESC had to carry out load-shedding to meet a shortfall of over 200megawatts despite the fact that all units of its generating plant at Bin Qasim were running, though not to their full capacity.

Load-shedding together with power fluctuations affected many localities of the city, including business and industrial areas. Also, there were reports of wire theft in Block 13-D of Gulshan-i-Iqbal. In addition, the delay in repair of local faults and lack of response to repeated complaints lodged at the utility’s customer service centres drew the ire of public.

Calling from Defence, a woman said the utility had no right to ask for payment of bills as it had failed to provide uninterrupted power supply.

A consumer from Garden East complained of suffocation due to repeated power cuts. He said in addition to two-hour-long load-shedding at least thrice a day, a long delay in rectification of local faults was agonising.

Since the utility has not invested to improve its transmission and distribution systems, power supply in many areas was discontinued due to overloading of various feeders.

Failure of the KESC to enhance its generation and distribution systems is pushing the city towards a scenario when half of the metropolis will remain without electricity after every two hours this summer, analyst say.

Last summer when the peak demand touched 2,450MW, Wapda provided up to 700MW to the KESC. But it has been reduced to 300MW since November 2007 and citizens had to endure load-shedding for more than four hours a day.

There are projections that power demand would cross 2,700MW this summer, creating a shortfall of about 600MW in the absence of an expanded generation and distribution network of the KESC.

That the utility’s privatisation did not yield any positive result was also acknowledged by President Pervez Musharraf while inaugurating the DHA’s desalination plant a couple of years back. Looming power riots in the city have also perturbed the present rulers as a power crisis could trigger off public movement against them.

Since its privatisation, the KESC has come under fire from not only the consumers but also the government. The earlier operation and maintenance contractors, M/S Siemens, lacked any experience of managing such a utility. They took actions that allegedly damaged the basic structure of the utility. As a result, losses went up, revenue went down, power outages and frequent load-shedding became common and the consumers’ confidence was shattered, which damaged the utility’s image.

After M/S Siemens relinquished charge, it was expected that the KESC management would not repeat past mistakes but no lessons appear to have been learnt. The utility has been made top-heavy, i.e. instead of horizontal there is vertical integration.

The failure of the new owners to invest in the KESC and an internal tug of war also compelled utility workers to urge the government to take over the utility.