The 232 megawatts barge-mounted rental power plant, due to arrive here next month, will not benefit this load shedding-hit commercial and industrial hub of the country. Soon after starting the supply of 232 mw from the plant, a reduction of same amount of power (232 megawatts) would be made by Wapda in its supply to Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC).
This was stated by Tabish Gauhar, Chief Executive Officer of KESC, in an interview with a group of journalists from print media here in his office on Monday. Refuting the news item attributing to Minister for Water and Power Parvez Ashraf's claims that Karachi would be given additional 100 mw by the Turkish plant, he said that it would not add to the KESC's power capacity as the same supply would be deducted from Wapda's supply to the company. "The electricity to be received by KESC from the barge-mounted plant would rather be costly as compare to what it receives from Wapda," he added.
According to Tabish, the company is going to start work on the 560 mw dual-fired combined cycle plant at Bin Qasim plant, and all necessary arrangements have been completed. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is expected perform the ground breaking ceremony of the project next month, he added.
The Bin Qasim plant was to be completed in four phases, with the first phase of 400 mw was expected to be commissioned by 2012. Talking about the investment by the Abraaj-led management of the company, he said that at least $193 million, out of the promised $361 million, has been invested in the company to date, which is $43 million ahead of schedule.
He said the KESC has an Amendment Agreement (AA) to the 2005 Implementation Agreement (IA) between KESC and the Government of Pakistan, which requires and commits an investment by new shareholders into KESC of $361 million over a period of three years. This capital commitment is made over 2009-2012 and in fact, funds began being remitted to KESC in September 2008, in spite of the new agreement not being signed until April 2009, an interval of seven months.
He claimed the injection of such amount was the single largest foreign investment in the country during the last one year. The CEO said due to the non-payment of Rs 40 billion from the government and other public sector entities, 20 percent power theft, over 40 percent T&D losses and at least 10 percent non-payment of dues from other customers, the company was facing acute shortage of money to purchase the furnace oil for running its oil based plants.
The company had to spend at least $63 million out of the $193 million, on the purchase of fuel and salaries of over 18000 KESC employees, he added. The company, he said, was also unable to carry out the preventive maintenance of its power generating plants during summer, for the lack of money. Besides, Tabish said, the government has also decided to reduce the supply of gas from 190 mmcft to 140 mmcft, to the company during December to February 2010.
He said that the company was disconnecting power supply to around 2000 customers daily for the alleged power theft, which had brought 19 percent improvement in units billed against theft and the rate of new connection had also increased by 22.4 percent. The CEO said that residential and commercial customers, under a fixed schedule, were facing loadshedding for three times, of an hour, in a day, while no outages were made between 1 am and 9 am. The city is exempted from the loadshedding on public holidays.