The sub-committee of the Senate Standing Committee on Water and Power in its report on Monday recommended the government to take over the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) for making it efficient and profit-making entity.
The committee presented its report to the main committee in the Parliament House, chaired by Senator Zahid Khan.
The sub-committee unanimously recommended in its report presented by its convener Senator Shahi Syed that the agreements with both private partners forthwith be cancelled and all payments, financial relief, incentive packages, tariff concessions and other benefits made by Government of Pakistan to the company since 2005 until the date be recovered.
It recommended a judicial commission may be appointed to thoroughly probe and make detailed assessment of losses suffered by the national exchequer, company and consumers of KESC owing to intentional failure by the private partners and initiate criminal cases against them.
The judicial commission should also examine the role of officials involved in granting illegal favors to the KESC at the cost of huge losses to National Exchequer, the committee’s report recommends.
The report further recommends that all retrenched or expelled workers and employees of the KESC immediately be re-instated from re-prospective dates and grant them all arrears and other benefits as per their entitlement.
It also recommended restoration of the KESC workers unions besides allowing them to work for the protection of interest of the workers and prosperity of the company under the law.
The committee’s convener told the body unanimously compiled the report after detailed examination, investigations, discussions, briefings, perusal of the agreements and its implementation and observing relevant rules and regulations.
The committee was of view that instead of provision of all kind by the government, the both partners of KESC i.e. Al Jummaya and Al-Hassan Associates (Private Consortium) and Ibraj Group constantly failed to enhance generating capacity of the Company for meeting the demands of Karachi in the last eight years and still getting 650MW power from National Grid (NTDC) on subsidies rates.
It says in view of twice failure of KESC Privatization since 2005, despite issuance of billions of funds, granting of numerous other benefits at the cost of huge losses to national exchequer and wasting of long eight years’ time, the company was still unable to meet the demands of Karachi.
The committee recommended that government should establish a body to evolve a proper mechanism for implementation and oversight future privatization of the companies for achieving the goals and objectives of the state owned companies.
Earlier, the Senate’s Standing Committee on Water and Power was briefed by chairman WAPDA regarding unfinished projects and funds for these schemes.
The committee’s chairman Senator Zahid Khan underlined the need for timely release of funds for the construction of small dams to overcome the energy shortage in the country.
