KESC disconnects power supply to Pakistan Steel Mills

[Naveed Yaseen]

By Moonis Ahmed

KARACHI: The Karachi Electric Supply Company has finally disconnected its power supply to Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) as a part of an aggressive recovery drive launched Saturday, KESC said.

Chief Executive Officer, KESC, Naveed Ismail said in a media briefing that PSM has not paid Rs 120 million bill after several notices and warning, therefore, the power supply to PSM had been disconnected on Saturday afternoon as it failed to meet its deadline.

Naveed said that KESC was still ready to settle down a payment plant with PSM in order to recover its unpaid bills but there could be no compromise over the current bill.

“The Metropolis has been facing load-shedding only because a big number of consumers are accustomed of not paying their current bills. Today, they owe us Rs 36 billion and our modest appeals have been ignored several times,” he said.

The media and the general public blame us for being soft towards them. “If a consumer does not pay the bill, they will face disconnection,” he declared. “PSM has its own power plant and utilizes its power for running of its whole machinery,” official sources told Daily Times. They said that plant produces 110MW power to run the mill on its full capacity, even PSM also supplies power to the city sometimes.

It is pertinent to mention that the PSM has been facing serious financial crisis, as it’s sales and production are gradually decreasing for last few months and sales have remained below Rs 2 billion since last one month. The production of state-own largest steel producer has almost stopped after acute shortage of raw materials and malfunctioning of its plants. Recently, PSM administration had requested Ministry of Industry and Production for a bailout of Rs 10 billion immediately to help it come out of crisis.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...2009_pg5_1