Do you wish to be partners with KESC?

The Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) has invited expressions of interest (EOIs) to form strategic partnerships with interested parties to improve its service and transform the power utility into a dynamic organisation.
The KESC believes that such partnerships would foster closer ties and contacts with various communities and help to improve its performance and quality of service for customers, as the approach would combine local knowledge and best practices to bring about a desired improvement in its services.
The alliances would be through Distribution Franchise Agreements (DFAs) for 11 of the KESC’s 28 business centres located in various areas of the city. Seventeen KESC centres have Aggregate Technical and Commercial (AT&C) losses of around 20 percent with a load shedding range of zero to three hours. At the remaining 11 centres, the AT&C losses are around 60 percent and are subjected to 4.5 to 7.5 hours of load shedding.
To improve the quality of power supply and reduce the power outages duration, the losses need to be drastically reduced so that the power company can purchase additional fuel needed to reduce the load shedding duration.
This is a win-win proposition for the registered customers, distribution franchisee and the KESC as it would enhance the utility’s ability to serve power customers in a better way and offer reasonable rewards to its partners for the improvements that they would bring about.
The business centres being considered for DFA are Baldia, Lyari, Orangi-I, Orangi-II, Liaquatabad, Nazimabad, Surjani, Gadap, Malir, Landhi and Korangi. The strategic partners, with area-centric expertise, access and know-how will create greater value for all stakeholders, especially KESC customers.
The strategic partnership will support the KESC in transforming these areas into sustainable business centres which will benefit all registered customers of the company. The KESC would have its own mechanism and monitoring system in place to track and control the performance of these franchisees across all key performance indicators including, but not restricted to, customer service and satisfaction, better turnaround times in managing customer complaints and reduction in load shedding through improvement in financial indicators.
The Franchisee will share in the improvements and after reaching breakeven state, retain the majority of the net cash improvement. The tariff mechanism and structure will remain the same as for all customers in the city, and as determined by NEPRA and notified by the government from time to time.
The DFA would be established for an initial period of 10 years.
The distribution franchise partner would be primarily responsible for commercial and routine operational activities in the franchised area such as, meter reading, billing, bill distribution, revenue collection, resolving consumer complaints and low tension (0.4kV) network maintenance.
The most attractive feature of this proposition is that the franchisee will have access, at no cost, to all existing systems and resources of KESC, based on certain terms and conditions of the contract. The franchisee will have the use of KESC employees that will be seconded for the period of the contract at no cost to the franchisee. These employees will remain on KESC’s payroll as per its terms of employment. The employees that the franchisee does not wish to retain would be transferred within the KESC. However, the cost of any additional non-KESC personnel would be borne by the franchisee.