Pointing fingers: KESC, workers blame each other for rolling blackouts

Officers accuse workers of sabotage, workers demand open inquiry.

KARACHI:

Load-shedding hours have gone up to 14 hours in the city and the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) and its workers continue to blame each other for causing it.

KESC spokesperson Aminur Rahman said that the union workers have occupied several of the utility’s installations across the city. They are holding a siege at the KESC store in Baldia Town, where pole-mounted transformers or PMTs are kept among other equipment, he said.

According to Rahman, over 50 men tried to break into KESC’s head office in DHA Phase I but the security guards reacted on time. The company filed a petition in the Sindh High Court to provide security to KESC’s offices, staff members and consumers, he said. A judge gave orders that the utility must be given protection.

Meanwhile, workers’ representatives continue to defend themselves by saying that the management is forcing them into this blame game. They claimed that none of the workers are involved in any unlawful activity.

People’s Workers Union general secretary Lateef Mughal said that all the unions, including the Collective Bargaining Agent (CBA), had demanded the government form an inquiry commission to look into the allegations. He felt that these allegations are the management’s tactics to shift focus away from core issues, such as power generation.

CBA general secretary Usman Baloch also said that the management is involving the union representatives and workers in such allegations only to defame them.

All operations are under the company’s control and it is the utility that is carrying out load-shedding, he said. If the workers were involved in occupying KESC installations, power outages would not have taken place, he explained.

The workers appealed to the high court to order an open inquiry to see who is involved in the unrest and to examine KESC’s power generating operations.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 24^th, 2011.