Sindh

KESC blues: ANP calls strike today

'Management must solve their issues through dialogue' says ANP leader.

Express June 03, 2011

KARACHI:

The Awami National Party (ANP) has called a strike on Friday against the Karachi Electric Supply Company’s (KESC) management.

The ANP’s Shahi Syed spoke to the press at Mardan House on Thursday. He appealed to residents, traders and transporters to remain at home and observe the strike call to show support for the 4,000 KESC workers, who were earlier sacked by the management.

Shah said the decision to go on strike was made at the all parties’ conference on May 31, if KESC did not address the workers’ problems. “We advise the management to solve the workers’ issues. We are observing the strike just because KESC is not solving the workers problems through dialogue but is using force.”

Syed demanded that they KESC stop the increasing load-shedding, power breakdowns and unfair billing across the city. “Otherwise we will be forced to appeal to the people to stop paying their bills until these problems are solved.”

According to Syed, the government should take responsibility for the losses faced by traders and industrialists because of unscheduled load-shedding. He blamed the Sindh chief minister and governor for the load-shedding problems.

Leaders from several political parties and KESC People Workers Union chairman Ayaz Mengal attended the press conference and expressed their support for the strike call.

“When KESC was under government control, it supported Sindh at the time of crises but now that it is privatised, it is suffering losses and firing its employees,” said the Punjabi Pakhtoon Ittehad (PPI) leader, Ayub Awan.

“The strike is being observed to save the labourers, the country and the economy,” said Pakistan Peoples Party’s Zafar Baloch. “If the KESC can give millions of rupees in salaries to office workers, then why can’t they give the workers’ their rights,” he added.

Sindh Dost Ittehad’s chairman, Zafar Jhandir, also criticised the KESC’s privatisation and said KESC owe Rs241 billion to several organisations.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 3^rd, 2011.

COMMENTS (21)

blithe | 12 years ago | Reply Bacha Khan and his ilk need to stop playing petty politics. Those employees just want entitlements without doing any work! They deserve to be fired! Such petty politics with no regard to national interests! What is the point of calling the strike? These two-bit political parties - be it ANP or MQM - must be asked to compensate the country for loss on GDP.

Kesc mazdoor | 12 years ago | Reply @Ihk: kesc management stop the salary of 6000 employees and deducted the salary of 2000 employees, whose supported to the management and continously working during the strike and rectify the fault but selfish management not supported and deduct their salary surprising, 5000 officer get the proper salary in this month as per management record they are properly and continuously attended the office its shocking, bz as per media news during the strike all kesc offices is closed and management also says so many time that all kesc offices was close so how is it possible that officer get the full salary. It is totally officer supporting management and their policy is mazdoor dusman and is it possible we are more support to management and working in kesc during the strike. Plz do the favor of kesc employees and fully support them.

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Kesc mazdoor | 12 years ago | Reply kesc management stop the salary of 6000 employees and deducted the salary of 2000 employees, whose supported to the management and continously working during the strike and rectify the fault but selfish management not supported and deduct their salary surprising, 5000 officer get the proper salary in this month as per management record they are properly and continuously attended the office its shocking, bz as per media news during the strike all kesc offices is closed and management also says so many time that all kesc offices was close so how is it possible that officer get the full salary. It is totally officer supporting management and their policy is mazdoor dusman and is it possible we are more support to management and working in kesc during the strike. Plz do the favor of kesc employees and fully support them.

Shah Sabah | 12 years ago | Reply @Yasir Khokhar: Excellent post man!

Rana Jawad Abdullah | 12 years ago | Reply @yasir Khokar: friend cudnt agree more to wat u have said.......brilliant post....

Ihk | 12 years ago | Reply @Aamer: hear hear!!

Syed Baquar | 12 years ago | Reply Same situation has occured in morning at M.T.Khan Road-Karachi, where ANPs armed men has blocked the road with burning tyres. I called 021-15 (Police Emergency) and lodged complaint and within 5 mintues one mobile of police came and disburse the ANPs armed gangsters (hats off to our police). I humbly request all please call 021-15 (from mobile) in such a incidents/situation (They are there to help).

Yasir Khokhar | 12 years ago | Reply Some body tell Shahi Syed that KESC is not an NGO, not any more. Its a private organization now. Instead of supporting miscreants, damaging the system ANP should be supporting KESC management to try to overcome the problem. KESC was performing better then LESCO, HESCO WADPA. Karachi was witnessing the minimum load shedding compared to whole country. The burden of such huge non-productive tail was eating up the profitability, resultantly making electricity dearer for people like us. If the company runs efficiently, its going to make the end product cheaper. The recent outages in the city ain't because of KESC's electricity shortfall, in deed its because of Unskilled/politicized/unionized/fired miscreants damaging the power supply every where in the city and making our life hell. For SHAHI SYED, don’t make it a political ground to earn your party votes. Think for the millions who are suffering at the cost of a few hundreds.

MSShaikh | 12 years ago | Reply I give a thumbs up to the KESC for keeping this rudimentary system working. Things are not perfect because the infrastructure is depleted, our 'honourable' citizens steal electricity and our political parties patronise them. People need to be sacked, it is a fact. Rightsizing needs to be done. Unfortunately, all political parties are only interested in their vote bank, and thus, won't allow staff reduction. This is blackmail. I am glad that in Karachi we have a schedule for load-shedding, it really helps. I wish KESC the very best, even though my electricity bills don't seem to be on a decline!

haris | 12 years ago | Reply Some political parties don't want to see getting the incompetent dismissed, sadly its the same with PIA, after all why would these political parties be rationale when it were these very people who recruited their workers or whomever that supported them, totally disregarding something called 'merit'.

Faisal | 12 years ago | Reply ANP is just working against the interest of Karachi. I have recently visited and found out that this so-called union is just supported by PPP and ANP. This is being done pourposefully to sabotage this city and to counter all development works carried out in past four or five years. I myself saw armed men attacking KESC Office Staff and dragging them out and burning the office not because of no light rather there was light in the area and they were shouting we wont let youwok. Those people attacking were easily identifiable that which part they belong.

Zeeshan H | 12 years ago | Reply After seeing my FB/Twitter feeds full of irrational statements blaming “evil” KESC for the power outages, I'm delighted to see the rational comments posted on this story.

Usman | 12 years ago | Reply Karachiites are now going to witness ANPnama today. All the best my fellow citizens!

Bilal Hashim | 12 years ago | Reply @Aamer: So very true Ali. Majority of the recruitment is based on political affiliation and not on merit. Noaw that ANP has jumped into the scene shows that they want their cut too from the KESC which is already infested with rats from both PPP and MQM. Having said this KESC over charged us in the prior months and was continuously directed by NEPRA to adjust the over charged amount to it's customers, but to this day they haven't done this and continuously seek to extend the date for carrying out this directive of NEPRA. All in all the corruption within the society has its tentacles extended into everything that we associated with directly/indirectly.

AJ | 12 years ago | Reply I cannot beleive how is this country still surviving. It's literally un-beleivable and un-acceptable. These politicians are damaging the country. Businesses are already suffering from heavy losses. It seems that their MOTO is to eat as much as they can for their remianing tenure and do nothing but encourage corruption.

Syed | 12 years ago | Reply KESC has every right to fire these corrupt workers and PPP will never let them do this, because their whole vote bank depends on filling up government offices until theres no room left there even to breath!

Arsalan Khan | 12 years ago | Reply so what happened to those armed terrorists who took over the grid station at first place?

Analyzer | 12 years ago | Reply Useless politicians sticking their noses where they don't belong. If kesc is trying to improve its bottom line by getting rid of useless burden then we should support the company. These cba thugs need to be taught a lesson, where are the security agencies when we need them?

Ahmed | 12 years ago | Reply Bad politics, corrupt staff, fuel saving tactic etc is responsibe for current crises. Everyone in power is silent or not paying much attention to worsening siotuation. Load management is no more scheduled and prolonged to around 8-10 hours. Why citizens of Karachi must suffer for CBA KESC conflict? Where are sou motto happy courts? Why rangers is not deployed to ensure safe operation of power houses and grid stations? I guess no one is listening. :(

Ali | 12 years ago | Reply @Aamer: I completely agree with you. Our problem is political parties not KESC. These parties never let good people try to solve issues.

Aamer | 12 years ago | Reply Just for the record, been living in Karachi for 23 years now, i.e since i've been born, never i repeat never in my entire life has KESC been operated so efficiently, never in my life i could imagine that we'll know exact load-shedding schedule for a day. Maybe the people of Karachi need to pay a visit to Lahore. So what if occassionaly and maybe at times frequently we get some un-announced power outages, fact is the system is so old and ill maintained i don't know how they manage to keep the system running for most of the time. These 4000 workers were obviously in-efficient and a burden on the KESC, its just been difficult for them that KESC is no more a government office, you can't sit around and get paid. And judging by the support they get from political parties, its obvious they are politically appointed, and have absolutely no merit.

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