50,000 industrialists boycott KESC

The highly frustrated business community of Karachi has decided not to pay the monthly electricity bills to Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) against the 12 hours’ long loadshedding in the industrial sector.
As the prolonged outages have paralysed life in the industrial areas of the city, the over 50,000 industrialists of the country’s financial hub will not pay the utility bill until restoration of the uninterrupted power supply from KESC, Mian Abrar, President Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry told Profit on Friday.
Industrialists not defaulting: Instead of paying the electricity bill to KESC, the industrialists of the city’s seven industrial associations would submit the bills to offices of seven Associations Trade and Industry which included S.I.T.E. Association, Federal B Area Association, Landhi Association, North Karachi Association, Korangi Association, S.I.T.E. Super Highway Association and Bin Qasim Association, in protest against the unjustified power breakdowns which have almost stopped activities in the sector, he said.
Through pay orders, the businessmen would submit the billed amount at the offices of various associations to show that the industrial consumers were not defaulters of the privately run public utility. But despite the regular payment made to KESC, the company was deliberately making power shortages in order to get gas and subsidised fuel supply from the government organisations.
Competitiveness in international market: Under the present 12-hours loadshedding in three cycles, is actually the breakdowns of power supply for 24 hours as the industries could not run their machines with frequent and prolonged outages. Besides KESC’s policies had pushed cost of production up, leaving the industries non-competitive in the international market. According to Abrar, this was the first time the businessmen of the city were forced to withhold payment of the monthly electricity charges as hours’ long loadshedding in the industrial areas had taken a heavy toll on industries. This, he said would also badly affect exports and the expected revenue generation for the national exchequer.
He further alleged that the management of the company was only focusing on how to steal money from the crisis hit consumers instead of spending money on infrastructure, power generation and distributions.
Earlier, KCCI members in a meeting attended by chairman of the BMG group and former president of KCCI Siraj Kasim Teli, KCCI President Mian Abrar Ahmad, Zubair Motiwala, Irfan Moton, Nisar Sheikhani, Yunus Bashir, Zia Ahmad Khan, Majyd Aziz, Mahtab Chawla and Tariq Malik, it was decided that a series of protests would be organised against power break downs started after, what KESC claims, the curtailment of gas supply from Sui Southern Gas Company.
Power crisis crippling industry: It was decided that if things did not change and the KESC did not bring down loadshedding, they would not pay power bills to the KESC and deposit the same along with pay order with the respective associations from Monday. If the KESC continued its highly deplorable policy, 17,000 industries of Karachi would be forced to close down and traders and workers would also be involved in the protest because they were also being hit by the power utility’s policy.
The concerned businessmen, industrialists, traders of the city had also staged a protest sit-in at the Karachi Press Club (KPC) on Wednesday against power load shedding in the industrial zones of the city.
According to sources the loadsheddings were purely blackmailing tactics started employed by KESC to get the industrialists support for pressurising SSGC to restore the gas supply to a maximum level.
Pay Your Power Bills or Face Disconnection; KESC’s Warning to KCCI: On the other hand KESC, in a statement has slammed the announcement made by the KCCI, in which the trade body members seem to have made a decision to refrain from paying the power dues to the utility. KESC denounces all such acts and considers it as an open violation, given the fact that the situation and the reasons behind the current power crisis, brought about by the massive and forced curtailment of gas supply to the power utility is a fact well known to them.
KESC has explicitly stated that all those power consumers, especially Industrialists who do not pay their bills on their respective due dates, their power supply will be disconnected without fail because KESC has a zero tolerance policy against willful defaulters. KESC cited that the bills which are up for payment pertain to the previous month’s power consumption, of a time when all the industrial consumers were enjoying exemption from load shedding in their industrial zones, which has been a standard policy of KESC for the past two years.