Pak Steel claims KESC owes Rs130m

The announcement came following power cut on Monday evening.

KARACHI: In a surprise move on Tuesday, Pakistan Steel (PS) claimed that Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) has to pay it outstanding dues of Rs130 million in electricity bills.

PS has its own power plant and it sometimes supplies power to the KESC grid. The PS claim came following KESC’s act of discontinuing power supply to PS on Monday evening over of its outstanding dues of Rs52 million.

“The power cut of PS has caused losses of up to Rs60 million because PS administration had to divert power to residential areas from its plant operations,” PS said.

PS administration, in a press release, said that it was shocked over the strict measure of KESC of discontinuing its power supply. However, the PS administration accepted that it owed Rs52 million to KESC in September bills.

Pakistan Steel had paid over 75% (i.e. Rs170 million of the total Rs222 million) of its dues to KESC, a few weeks ago, the statement said, adding that KESC cut PS’s power supply for the Rs52 million when the former owes the latter much more.

It also said that it was highly unprofessional on part of KESC to cut PS’s power supply considering the 30-year long history of commercial contract of buying and selling power between the two companies.

Furthermore, both organisations have a contract according to which both buy and sell electricity with other’s resources.

KESC on Monday said that it had discontinued the power supply of PS because the latter had failed to commit on its outstanding dues of Rs52million in September bills. KESC said that it had given time to PS to commit on its remaining dues, but it had failed to pay up in the stipulated time period.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 23^rd, 2011.