HYDERABAD, April 20: The intake of saline water from River Indus for the past one week is inflicting huge losses in per unit generation to Jamshoro Thermal Power House.

However, water technologist Dr Ahsan Siddiqui complained about the Power House management for not giving heed to improve water demineralisation process which will help them save fuel cost of per unit generation, even if river water had abnormal mineral readings.

Already, the Japanese power unit-I caught fire last week incurring massive loss to the power house.Currently, only two plants are energising the national grid with two others shut down for repair and maintenance.

Power House sources said the management was using huge amount of chemicals to demineralise river water with abnormal readings of chloride, hardness and conductivity, hence heavy expenditures.

Chief Engineer at Jamshoro Power House Abdul Malik Memon said demineralising of water was essential for turbine and boilers since abnormal readings were apt to rip these apart.

In December 2010 the power house was shut down for 16 days and earlier in May 2004, there was water crisis which brought the conductivity in power house to 3200.

A former engineer at Jamshoro Thermal Power House said power generation is affected when excessive amount of chemicals is used in water containing all impurities. In case if water is not demineralisation then boilers are shut down to avoid further losses, he said.

Dr Mohammad Ahsan Siddiqui believes power house authorities don’t improve their working. Neither they are improving demineralisation process nor installing reverse osmosis plant.

Exam postponed: The controller of examination of the University of Sindh announced on Friday that paper-I of constitutional law-II of the LLB part-II annual examination 2011 which was scheduled for April 21 had been postponed to May 8 because of a call for strike given by JSQM. Paper for total knee arthroplasty live and cadaveric surgery course to be held on April 21 and 22 in LUMHS has also been postponed.