During a daily briefing to the media, KESC CEO Naveed Ismail said that such
theft caused both financial losses to the company, and prolonged power outages.
Analysts, however, say that unknown copper wire thieves are convenient
scapegoats for an inventory shortfall which merits investigation.
The CEO did not mention the copper wire thefts during his presentation before
the Sindh Governor on May 29, or his briefing to the media on June 2.
In its presentation, the KESC asserted that Rs1 billion had been allocated for
reserved inventory for rain repairs, and that these spare parts were stored at
31 different locations. Mr Ismail said the utility would provide dedicated
technical staff to each town nazim in the city during the monsoon to quickly
rectify faults.
The KESC chief also claimed that no load-shedding took place on Friday, though
sources at the utility say a shortfall of at least 200MW was faced.
Consumers, too, had a different story to tell, with residents of Clifton,
Federal B Area, parts of Korangi, Malir, North Karachi and adjoining areas and
Nishtar Road complaining that they were still suffering outages.
The KESC said these outages were caused by tripping or unattended faults, not
load-shedding.
Consumers allege the KESC is resorting to load-shedding under the guise of
‘dumping of load,’ ‘tripping’ or ‘cable faults,’ due to overloading of the
system, which was old and suffering from inadequate load management. Optimum
utilisation of the Bin Qasim plant in recent days, under government pressure,
however, and increased supply from Wapda (at times crossing 800MW), has meant
that outages have decreased.
A housewife from Clifton Block two was furious because there was no electricity
in the area from midnight for six hours at a stretch and again for one and a
half hour from 3.30pm on Friday.
She complained that the power supply situation in her area was not satisfactory
and accused the concerned KESC staff of not attending to the faults. She also
alleged that at least once a week the KESC was resorting to a five to six hour
outage during the night. Similar complaints were lodged by residents of North
Karachi and parts of Federal B Area.
Electricity legislation to be updated
Responding to a question during the media briefing, Naveed Ismail said that the
KESC would participate in the present government’s exercise of modernising the
Electricity Act of 1910, under which the company had been established by the
British Government in 1913, and the Electricity Rules of 1937.
In this context he pointed out that the electricity supply system had been
privatised in the neighbouring country a long time ago, and the law had already
been updated according to the needs of a fast growing population and industrial
growth.
‘Throughout the world, hydroelectric power is considered to be the best
electricity source,’ the CEO said. However, in our country, water pressure is
not available throughout the year and therefore coal is the next best available
natural resource, he added.
8 cable faults in city
Syed Jan Abbas Zaidi, the KESC’s Chief Operating Officer (Distribution), claimed
a considerable decline in complaints lodged on 118. He said that calls had
dropped to nearly 14,800, which showed a fall in the number of complaints.
Zaidi, who had earlier accused KESC consumers of theft on a significant scale,
further said there were 104 Business Operation Centres (BOCs) in the city, of
which 47 had been attacked by protesting mobs during the past year. Staff
members had also been beaten up. The protestors, he said, expressed their anger
this way, but they forgot that the same complaint centres had to be back in
operation the next day to address their own complaints.
Such attacks had stopped the repair system from working and the complaints had
increased during such gaps.
He also said that on Friday afternoon, 18 main cable faults had been reported in
the city and because of these electricity supply in the airport area and Malir
had been affected.
Three cables had also been damaged because of the on-going construction work on
the CDGK’s Traffic Corridor-III project near the Mazar-e-Quaid. |
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