News
Monday, June 13, 2011
No solution in sight of KESC, CBA disputeBy Masroor Afzal Pasha
KARACHI: Authorities seem helpless to control the privatised power utility in commercial capital as consumers continue to be the largest victims of the stand-off between the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) and its elected Collective Bargaining Agents (CBA) over retrenchment issue.
The protest between the KESC management and its CBA union marked its forty-sixth day on Sunday and the employees moved from Karachi Press Club to power utility’s office to put more pressure on the management’s top brass. As far as the regulator is concerned, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority has completely failed to address consumers’ miseries at the hands of KESC management.
The list of victims is increased as the KESC continue to blame Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) for providing natural gas of 276 mmcfd. The power utility is defaulted to a potential amount of Rs 24 billion. The KESC started to target state-owned largest oil marketing, Pakistan State Oil (PSO) for the supply of furnace oil and forcibly demanded unplanned furnace oil by using some political influences and brought country’s strategic reserves to critical levels.
Now, the major victim in KESC’s management is its CBA who is at protest against the management’s decision for sacking over 4,700 employees termed as surplus pool of the company.
Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah asked the KESC management to facilitate the consumers’ facing load shedding, outages and other difficulties in a meeting in the last week of May. Shah stressed there must be compromise and mutual understanding with objectives and responsibility to resolve the issues in larger interest of the country.
Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Sindh General Secretary Taj Haider told Daily Times that the KESC management is inexperienced and incapable and does not understand human relations.
They are not bothered about the miseries being faced by the consumers due to power crisis, he remarked, adding, there must be some hidden plan behind all this. “Third party agreements or middle-man contractors are converting corporate funds into private funds that will ultimately be returned to the relatives of management,” he pointed out. He questioned why private contractors are inducting low salaried workers at sensitive installations of the country.
Haider said we are against contractual employment in the KESC as it is a violation of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention. KESC People Workers Union (PWU) General Secretary, Latif Mughal said the employees were protesting for only one demand and that is the retrenchment should be stopped.
The KESC management is acting like state within a state and no one is stopping them from this act, he added.
For last three years, Mughal said, the KESC management has not been meeting the optimum percentage of power generation. The potential of 1500 Mega Watts (MW) of generation has not been achieved and the generation remained below 800MW whereas Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) was providing 700MW, 50MW was being generated from rental power and about 100MW from Gul Ahmed Power and Tapal Power despite their generation potential of only 250MW.
Mughal said, the power utility is conducting about 10 to 11 hours load-shedding in the metropolis and one hour load-shedding saves about 100MW, which translates into roughly 1000-1100MW from this against the demand of about 2500-2600MW.
The Daily Times was waiting since May 25 for a meeting with the KESC Chief Executive Officer, Tabish Gauhar to get his opinion on these issues but the utility’s officials reverted with his unavailability due to some serious engagements.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk