Special teams of KESC staff accompanied by magistrates, army and police officials have been formed to recover Rs 18 billion dues

By AMANULLAH BASHAR
Nov 08 - 14, 1999

All is set to launch a massive crackdown on power thieves and over three lakh KESC defaulters to recover Rs18 billion dues outstanding against them. These defaulter have not paid even a single penny of their electricity charges for the last 12 months.

A list of around 4 lakh defaulters both in the public and private sector is in the hands of Army officers, managing the KESC affairs. The list has been divided into different categories. Names of those who have been identified as chronic defaulters are being sent to the relevant agencies responsible for speedy recovery of the defaulted amount.

The KESC authorities seem to have decided to steal the show by using the psychological reverence created by the Nov16 deadline, given by the Chief Executive General Pervez Musharraf to the bank defaulters, for recovery of KESC's outstanding dues.

Brig Khurshid Alam, incharge for implementation of recovery drive told PAGE that prevailing atmosphere due to measures announced by the new government would also be used to bring the corporation out of financial mess.

KESC'S OUTSTANDING DUES

Federal Government Departments: Rs1,784 million

State owned Enterprises: Rs123 million

Provincial Government Depts: Rs290 million

KWSB: Rs743 million

KDA: Rs7 million

KMC: Rs245 million

Total outstanding dues against public sector: Rs3,192 million

Private Sector Consumers

Industrial Rs3,753 million

Residential/Commercial Rs14,138 million

Total Dues Rs17,330 million

Giving the current financial status of KESC, Brig. Khurshid said that due to strict financial discipline, the level of monthly billing has been improved from Rs1.3 billion to Rs2.2 billion. Against Rs2.2 billion monthly billing, monthly expenditures are in the range of Rs2.4 billion to Rs2.5 billion which means that the corporation is still running in deficit. We are working to streamline the financial strength of KESC through different measures which include recovery of outstanding dues plus controlling expenditures within our folds."

The monthly billing against public sector consumers, specially KMC and KWSB etc, is Rs100 million but they have developed a culture of keep on piling their dues and by the end of the year the held up dues are adjusted by the government. We have to do away with this trend and we are asking these departments to clear their monthly dues on month-to-month basis while the issue of piled up dues would be handled separately.

Regarding effectiveness of the current recovery drive, he said that the special teams of KESC, accompanied by magistrates, army officials and other agencymen including police would deal with the defaulters, no matter how influential they are.

He said that the current deficit in the KESC is estimated at Rs600 million which he hopes to overcome shortly which is necessary to put back the corporation on the right track.

At present KESC's monthly requirement is Rs2.5 billion to meet its obligations: Details of which are as under:

Fuel bill Rs998 million

Power Purchase Rs760 million

Dev and non-dev expenditures Rs459 million

Debt servicing Rs325 million

Total expenditures Rs2,542 million

ILLEGAL CONNECTIONS

According to official figures, there are about 450,000 illegal connections generally known as 'Kundas' spread all over Karachi. KESC estimates that about 80 megawatt of power is being utilized through these illegal connections causing a revenue loss to the tune of Rs 80 million per month approximately. However, the actual loss is much more which is reflected in the 45 per cent transmission and distribution losses in the KESC system. Efforts are, however, being made to bring down the transmission and distribution losses upto the level of 30 per cent he said.

He conceded to the fact that instead of blaming people for illegal connection, there is a need of a system which can provide new connections to the people asking for it. While you are unable to meet the demand of the consumers of new connections they have no option but to go for 'Kundas', he maintained.

In order to address the Kunda issue, the KESC management, according to Brig. Khurshid, is providing 20,000-25,000 new connections which ultimately would result in strengthening the financial health of the corporation with the expansion in number of consumers which is currently estimated at around 1.3 million in KESC's franchised area of licence.