KARACHI, Oct 21: The privatised Karachi Electric Supply Company’s new management, which owes billions of rupees to WAPDA, PEPCO, PSDO and SSGC, on Tuesday disconnected power supply to the head offices and other administrative offices of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board, on account of default in clearing outstanding dues.
On the other hand, several political parties and traders’ groups have announced their support for the Jamaat-i-Islami’s strike call for Oct 24 to protest against the KESC’s abnormal increase of 70 per cent in power rates.
According to Qashif Effendi, spokesman for the new corporate management of the KESC, the water board owed the power utility some Rs5.7 billion. Therefore, they disconnected power supply only to the offices of the KWSB. Work in various departments of the KWSB head office, near Karsaz, was seriously affected due to disconnection of power. This included operations of the billing department at the water utility’s head office, said KWSB sources.
A senior official of the KWSB said that work at the chairman’s secretariat at the water board’s head office was not affected as power supply was provided to it through a generator.
He said that electricity to other important installations of the KWSB, including its pumping stations and its main billing section at the Civic Centre, remained uninterrupted.
KWSB Managing-Director Ghulam Arif Khan confirmed to Dawn that the KESC had disconnected power supply to his office due to non-payment of electricity dues and that they had been taking some measures to pay the power dues as early as possible.
In reply to a question whether this action of the KESC would extend to sensitive installations of the water board including its pumping stations, the MD said that it is all up to the people who took the action of disconnection of power supply to the KWSB head office.
Meanwhile, load-shedding in different parts of the city continued unabated and people experienced prolonged outages at least four times during the last 24 hours. Unit 4 of the Bin Qasim Power Plant tripped due to overloading of the system, which created a shortfall of over 200 megawatts, leaving many areas of Shah Faisal, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, and parts of Malir without electricity.
Protest call
Over half-a-dozen political parties have announced their intention to support the JI’s Oct 24 strike call.
Addressing a joint press conference led by the JI deputy chief Professor Ghafoor Ahmad on Tuesday at the party office, they appealed to people not only to make the strike a success but also asked them not to pay their power bills until the decision to increase power rates was withdrawn and load-shedding was stopped.
Others who addressed the press conference were Imran Saeed Baghpati of the Tajir Action Committee, Siddique Rathore of the JUP, Zia Abbas of the NPP, Subhan Ali Sahil of the TI, Syed Hasan Mehmood of the SNF, Khan Mohammad Baloch of the PAT, Ali Hasan Chandio of the STP, Chaudhry Zaheer of the MJAH and Nusrat Mirza of the MRC, along with others.
They all condemned the 70 per cent increase in power rates and said that Karachi, which is the economic jugular of the country, has been paralyzed due to load-shedding.
Prof Ghafoor said that traders and citizens were perturbed over the attitude of the KESC, which had pushed half the city into darkness. He said the Pakistan People’s Party and Muttahida Qaumi Movement had failed to honour the commitments and promises they made with the people before the Feb 18 elections.
He condemned the attitude of the KESC for refusing to see local JI leader Mohammad Hussain Mehanti and demanded that if load-shedding was necessary, its schedule should be announced while petrol prices – which had come down in the international market by 50 per cent – should be revised.
Meanwhile, youth organization Pasban on Tuesday staged a protest rally outside the Karachi Press Club against the increase in power rates and load-shedding.
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