Senators pour scorn on K-Electric

ISLAMABAD: The Senate on Thursday poured scorn on K-Electric for its alleged failure to abide by the sell-off agreement it signed with the government to revamp power production and distribution system as legislators called for the firm’s performance audit.
The federal government was asked to take over the formerly KESC before the company reached a dead end and things spiraled out of control as the K-Electric was only making money at the cost of misery of Karachiites. It was claimed that the power firm was not making payments to PSO while generating power from oil.
Senate Chairman Mian Raza Rabbani went ahead to say that K-Electric was like a state within the state, which refused to sit with the federal government, with the Sindh governor, with the Sindh government and also refused to sit with Parliament. The power company was assailed for not investing in improving its service and increasing generation.
The non-intervention by the federal government in messy affairs of the power firm despite having 26 percent shares in it, was also questioned, as they urged the government to review undue concessions being given to the firm during the review process due in October this year.
The legislators had discussion on a report of the Standing Committee on Water and Power on unprecedented loss of lives caused by the summer heat wave coupled with power cuts by K-Electric and on admitted motion moved by PPP Senators Taj Haider, Saeed Ghani, Saleem Mandviwala and Sassui Palijo, on recurrent breakdown of electricity in Karachi. They claimed the firm was grossly under-utilising its resources.
The senators had a consensus that had there been no power break downs during heat wave, there would have been far less casualties during the holy month of Ramazan. They traced contradictions in K-Electric’s stances from time to time, alleging the firm’s only aim was to mint money while paying attention to its appalling standard of services. They called for its performance audit by the auditor general of Pakistan.
They accused the power firm of discrimination in supply of electricity to consumers and claimed the low income groups in Karachi were being deprived of power most of the time. They claimed the firm had enough capacity to meet Karachi’s power need on its own but was cashing in on 650MW being supplied to it from the national grid.
It was pointed out from the House standing committee report while Nepra maintained that K-Electric was generating power to the maximum but lacked the capacity to transfer it, whereas K-Electric claimed it had invested over $I billion on transmission and infrastructure, indicating a basic contradictions between the two sides.
The federal government was asked to evolve a mechanism of monitoring after the privatisation of the state entities to ward off K-Electric like situation in future.
Those, who spoke included Saeed Ghani, Taj Haider, Sassui Palijo, Saeelm Mandviwala, Mushahid Hussain Syed of PPP, Dr. Jehanzeb Jamaldeni of the Balochistan National Party and PML-N’s Nihal Hashmi.
Winding up the discussion, State Minister Muhammad Balighur Rehman also agreed that number of deaths could have been minimum, had there been no power outages in Karachi. He held out an assurance to the House that the contract had expired several months back and the firm’s response was lukewarm towards renewal but the government would keep in mind the power supply from the national grid and some other issues.