K-Electric issues rebuttal to news report

Islamabad
In response to The News story titled, ‘K-Electric failure threatening whole transmission system’ published on July 23, 2015, the KE on Friday clarified that when discussing finances in the report, there is a lack of accuracy and a false equivalency that has been created between the issue of circular debt and KE’s financial incompetency.
The K-Electric statement said that on multiple occasions, KE has requested the government of Pakistan to chalk out a feasible plan for offsetting receivables and payables to enhance the financial stability of all organisations including KE, but to no avail. Unlike others, KE has consistently made all payments on time, every time. Transactions with PSO for furnace oil, the priciest commodity, are conducted in cash amounting to billions every month! It is telling how the newspaper ignored such critical facts in its ‘reporting’ and labelled KE as a GoP defaulter, when in turn it is the government that owes KE over PKR 110 billion. KE has clarified time and again that the power utility owes the GoP more than PKR 75 billion (which is on record) and even if this is settled, the government has to pay the power utility more than PKR 35 billion.
As Pakistan’s only vertically integrated utility, KE is responsible for producing its own energy. Since 2009, 1037MW of capacity have been added to the system with investment of over USD 1.2 billion. USD 400 million have been spent on bringing transmission and distribution losses down from 38% to less than 23% today which is a feat recognised by local and international institutions both. Another USD 300 million will be rolled out in the next 3-5 years to further enhance this number. Fleet efficiency has been improved by more than 22% through rehabilitation and capacity building measures. 12 grid stations and over 400 feeders have been added and all this data is not only audited internally and externally, but is on record, accessible and could be verified with ease. If this is not evidence of improvement, what does the reporter consider credible?
The onslaught of baseless and biased accusations without proof also demonstrates a lack of understanding of electrical systems. Re-energizing a system, which has tripped depends on several factors. Inclement weather and unsanctioned load increase chances of surge that can cause recurrent tripping, and naturally prolongs the process. This does not mean that KE’s system is inferior to that of the National Grid, nor is it a liability. Hence it cannot be possible that KE’s system affects the NTDC in any way.
KE has taken strict efforts to weed out corruption and nepotism from within its ranks. Since 2009, over 1600 employees have been dismissed on grounds of corruption despite being offered a VSS (Voluntary Separation Scheme), which cost the new management billions; the company continues to hold a zero-tolerance attitude for such behaviour. KE recruits individuals from top-tier universities and has operated one of the largest Graduate Trainee Programmes in the country since 2009. One only needs to look at the incidents of 2011, where the unionised culture of the company was dismantled, to see how strictly the company adheres to its policies. It is unprofessional and in poor taste that a newspaper so willing to cite articles with “juicy details” from 2008 will overlook such historic points in the company’s journey and turnaround which has been widely appreciated.
Finally, on the question of supply to Karachi, KE has brought a turnaround, exempting 60% of the city from loadshedding today including the industrial zones of the city, compared to 24% in 2009. Using the faults, which occurred this summer to colour KE’s entire history negatively is amateur reporting at best and biased at worst.
Ahmad Noorani Adds: It’s only coincident that an independent body Nepra has issued notice to the KE for all its failures the KE tried to defend in this clarification.
The KE by doing jugglery with words tried to confuse readers regarding financial matters and attempted to connect its inability to collect outstanding dues from Sindh government departments with its pending issues with federal government. KE unjustifiably trying held federal government responsible for the outstanding amount of Sindh government departments which in fact KE officials not recovering because of its own local interests. KE has to pay Rs30 billion to NTDC and Rs35 billion to SSGC, which is an undeniable fact. The generation of electricity as pointed in KE release is from this SSGC supply, which is a federal government entity. KE is taking credit of producing some electricity but not even paying gad price.
KE investment claims are baseless and its system is absolutely pathetic, a fact which is proved every day in Karachi. Few investments were made in some selected areas which was a compulsion and must for KE’ survival mostly because of political reasons and business but overall system is still disastrous. Majority of areas of Karachi are left with old, outdated and obsolete infrastructure, which results in frequent breakdown and extended outages.
KE needs to improve the technical knowledge of its media team instead of making ridiculous comments in response to a national media story as K-Electric system outage does affect the national grid system stability in more than one way and can result in outages on the national grid and black out which has happened many times. Whole system is connected and tripping in poor infrastructure in Karachi affects whole transmission system.
What Nepra and federal government teams observed and documented is that system protection is altogether missing in KE infrastructure. This includes isolation system, which protect other areas in case one develops fault. For example, in case of tripping on KDA transformers, why other Karachi lines and the national transmission tripped? Will KE ever explain in light of above clarification?
As KE has not installed any isolation system, it transferred its tripping on national transmission line which caused closure of Jamshoro and Hubco plants. This could have tripped the entire system if there would not have existed recently improved isolation system in the national transmission. Federal government has to officially state at a moment that KE is trying to blackout in the entire country in this context. Instead of improving, KE start mudslinging on those pointing out its faults and ruining lives of Karachi citizens.
Federal government is at least clear on the count that whatever agreement for supply of electricity will be made it will be with consensus and after imposing public-interest-oriented clauses so that KE can be made accountable which is missing at present. It is clear that KE is not negotiating and taking supply of 650MW from national grid without any legal backing only because present set of agreements totally favour KE. These agreements were gifted by political elite, which is patronising the power entity even now. For almost more than three years the KE remained protected because of a stay order from Sindh High Court (SHC).
Federal government officials confided to The News on authority that KE officials don’t even listen or respond to any communication or advice from federal government but they came on table to talk with federal government to discuss issues pertaining to pending payments but only when KE was terrible taken aback because of frequent tripping following recent heat wave. However, despite its promise to come on table after four days of first meeting and finalise things, KE backed out once again as situation was improved a little. Bad luck to KE, things once again deteriorated in Karachi and went to worst-ever stage. Federal government still awaiting KE official to come on table and talk but blackmailing is the only answer. Karachiiets are unlucky. The News stands by its story.