The cash trapped Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) which is unable to clear salaries of over 28000 employees has also started facing disconnection of power supply from Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) for non-payment of dues. Though KESC denied that the supply was disconnected because of non-payment, the whole building of Civic Center remained under dark for two days.
On Thursday there was no power supply at the 10-storey building causing acute problems to the staff and thousands of visitors. People specially the old were forced to use stairs to climb up the high building as all lifts were lying dysfunctional. Talking to Business Recorder, an official at electricity department of KMC, who did not want to be named, said that a technical fault had occurred at KESC and KMC installations on Wednesday which remained unresolved even after 24 hours. According to him concerned KESC office demanded undertaking against the expenses to be made to rectify the fault besides the copies of paid bills. But after receiving the required documents, concerned office of KESC started demanding the payment of electricity dues which has been swelled over Rs 60 million.
However, when the matter was discussed by high ups of both KMC and KESC, the latter, on Thursday, has agreed to restore the supply of power by evening. On the other hand official sources at KESC claimed that the supply was temporarily disconnected due to a technical fault in the area and it was restored within few hours. Despite the non-payment of dues the supply was not disconnected by the company. In the absence of power supply, staffs in majority of the departments fled from their seats.
Reacting over the disconnection of power, some officials at Recovery department of KMC also found discussing ways to move against over Rs 5 billion, KESC owed to KMC in terms of the charges use of lands. According to them, KMC high ups should restart its move against the power company which had not been paying the dues of the reserved lands, which is in its use for the last 50 years, despite issuing several notices by the city government. KESC was not paying the dues of land which is in occupation of different grid stations, sub stations, offices, electric poles and underground cables of the company.
Referring to an earlier notices issued to KESC, they claimed that KESC, being the private company was defaulting Rs 2,024 million to KMC in terms of district tax which, with the addition of surcharge of Rs 1,623 million had estimated as Rs 3647.5 million. The dues of Rs 266.8 million and Rs 1716.1 million were also owing to KDA and KMC respectively, for years back. As KESC charges the electricity bills according to the commercial tariffs, KMC has the write to claim of the dues of its land. KMC was charging the same, on Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC), PTCL etc they added.
Comments
Comments are closed.