80 percent new defective meters cause millions of losses to KESC

Eighty percent electric meters, which the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) has currently purchased from Lahore-based firm, have been found defective and are causing millions of rupees losses to the company.
As the company has dissolved the "outstation inspection team", which previously was to check all items the company buys, there is no process or source of checking things prior to purchase in the public utility, sources told Business Recorder on Saturday.
The company had recently purchased at least 6,500 single-phase meters from Escort, a Lahore-based firm, and more than 80 percent meters were found defective when these were checked by the meter department of KESC in Karachi, resulting in millions of rupees losses to the company.
The outstation inspection team was used to check all such things before its purchase from inside and outside the country to avoid any technical defectiveness later, they added.
The team, sources said, was dissolved by the new management, to curtail expenses on inspectors' visits outside the country but after the decision the company was likely to face more losses in terms of defective imports as KESC has already made agreements with different international companies for buying the electric wires and transformers etc.
According to sources, the company has currently demanded cables, current transformers, power transformers and others related electric parts etc from Japan, Italy, China and some other countries, which are likely to be include defective items due to lack of proper inspection. They said the team mostly included senior engineers and officers, who had visited many countries like Japan, China, Dubai, etc, to check electric machines, parts and other requirements of the company.
After the dissolution of the inspection team the company has no other source to check such things prior to purchase and all defectives proved later would cause losses to the company, they added. Sources said Escort-made single phase meters were even not able to run on 50 miliwatts. They said that the new meters, if supplied more than 50 mili watts, were losing its electric consuming records.
"The company is only interested to save some money by dissolving such inspection team but on the other hand it was reluctant to minimise the unproductive expenditures and high salaries of its officials" they alleged.