The Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) has decided to shut down the SITE power plant after around 40 of its staff members working at the power generation plant were kidnapped Wednesday morning and taken to an undisclosed location on four trucks, claimed the power company in a statement.
According to the statement, the police and other law enforcement agencies neither provided any security to the power plant nor did they make any attempt to pre-empt the forced shutdown of the plant or the kidnapping of its employees.
The SITE Gas Turbines Power Station provides 90MW of electricity, which is mainly supplied to the industrial units in SITE Area, but after its forced shutdown, the factories located in the area would have no electricity. Since no operational and maintenance staff was left at the plant, the safe functioning of the power generation machinery could not be ensured; therefore, the KESC has shut down the plant to pre-empt any untoward incident.
The KESC claimed that the law enforcement agencies had been directed by the Sindh High Court to safeguard the power company’s employees, assets and installations, but they were absent from the SITE power plant, despite repeated calls of the KESC management.
The company also claimed that members of its union targeted its IT and communications system and damaged the entire cable network affecting the internal and external Internet communication system of the utility.
It further claimed that about 30 union members on motorcycles attacked and wounded all the members of a repair team despatched to attend to public complaints in DHA Phase V.
The union members had entangled the electricity supply wires, loosening the conductor, and switched off the low tensions breaker causing disconnection of the 250kVA PMT of Korangi B Area Girls College a day earlier, the KESC added.
The power company said that when a repair team arrived on the spot on public complaint, its members could not ascertain the actual fault of wire entanglement until they switched on the low tension breaker, which caused a huge flash, bursting the breaker that burnt the face, right arm and neck of lineman Wahid Kashif.
The KESC said that Kashif was shifted to the burns ward of the Civil Hospital Karachi where the doctors found out that 14 percent of his body had been burnt in the incident. He was later shifted to the Plastic Surgery Hospital, the company added.
The maintenance employees of the KESC later examined the PMT and discovered that the wire had purposely been entangled to cause an accident to the repair team, the power company claimed.
