City’s 60pc exam centers brace for outages

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At least 60 percent Matric examination centers in the city are braving hours-long load shedding due to the ministry of education’s default on Rs 36 million outstanding power dues.

The remaining 40 percent of the examination centers, however, are exempted from load shedding in the just-started scorching summer heat, thanks to K-Electric (KE) which claimed on Friday to have exempted the centers from outages.

“Granting exemption to 100 percent centers is not practical,” given the fact that these examination centers were spreading all across the city limits, said the power utility in a statement.

“This is more so, because 60 percent of these examination centers are in high losses and very high loss areas, categorised either due to power theft, non-payment of dues, or in some cases both,” the company said.

Despite the above impediments, the KE being cognizant of the needs of the students appearing for their Matric examinations has worked out the load shed schedule such that there’s no planned load shedding during the exam timings in over 40 percent of the centers.

The KE stressed upon the education authorities to fulfill their responsibility of providing comfortable atmosphere to the candidates by paying their long due bills immediately.

Elaborating on the default, the KE said over 1,400 connections belonging to educational institutions of education departments of the city and the provincial government had defaulted on an accumulated amount of over Rs 36 million.

“With that huge default, it was unrealistic that these departments demand any sort of exemption from load shedding to begin with,” K-Electric said.

However, being a responsible power utility, the KE stepped up to ensure that the maximum relief possible could be extended to such examination centers. It said that nonpayment of power bills by the educational institutions was in fact injustice towards their students who had to appear in the examinations in difficult conditions.

The company said these government-run departments needed to realise their responsibilities and pay their defaulted bills.

The KE, the company said, understood the situation from the students’ point-of-view but there was a need for realising that the sole responsibility of such a situation lies on these educational institutions, the provincial and the federal government.