KESC’s T&D losses up by 3.76pc for July-Sept 2009

[Naveed Yaseen]

While the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) has been carrying out an aggressve campaign against power theft, the utility’s Financial Statement for the period July-September 2009 showed transmission and distribution losses at 37.33 per cent that increased by 3.76 per cent, while comparing with Transmission & Distribution (T&D) losses of the corresponding period of last year.

The financial statement, released on Saturday, said that the company’s total electricity units available for distribution increased by 7.47 per cent, its cascading impact to the level of units billed was diluted to 1.39 per cent, which is attributable to the increased T & D losses.

The statement said that the cost of power purchases increased by 12.10 per cent mainly due to the upward price revision and higher power purchases volume from the National Transmission and Dispatch Company. Operations and management expenses of the company increased by 13.68 per cent (being Rs3,063 million in July-September 2009 and Rs2,690 million for corresponding period of last year) due to increase in salaries and allowances of the employees and certain other costs.

RECOVERY AND ANTI-THEFT DRIVE: Meanwhile, speaking at a media

briefing on Saturday, Jan Abbas Zaidi, the KESC Chief Operating Officer Distribution, informed the media that during the past week, the KESC had disconnected 12,000 non-paying consumers in the city.

However, a total of 7,992 of these consumers had made full or partial payment and their electric supply had been restored. The Region I had reconnected 2,274 consumers, Region II 2,465, Region III 2,162 and Region IV reconnected 1,091 power consumers.

Zaidi also said that the IBC Clifton had raided the Afghan Carpet showroom on October 28 during random checking. Both the meters installed at the premises had been found to be tampered with.

An FIR had been registered against Shamim Ahmed Usman under Section 39 of the Electricity Act.

SUPPLY DEFICIT UPDATE: While giving out the operational update, Zaidi said that the deficit of gas faced by the KESC continued to exist and on Saturday the KESC had been receiving 194 MMFCD instead of the required 280 MMFCD of gas. This was the major reason behind shortfall of 219 Megawatt (MW) of electricity at 2pm on the day, when the power demand stood at 1933 MW while the utility had been supplying 1714 MW electricity.

Meanwhile, owing to widened shortfall of electricity, several areas of the city came under several spells of power cuts and load shedding that continued till late night hours.

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