Unpaid bills: Government, industrialists lose water, electricity supply

KWSB disconnects water supply to SITE, while HESCO cuts power to govt departments.

KARACHI: The Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) disconnected water supply to the Sindh Industrial and Trading Estate (SITE) on Wednesday over unpaid bills.

Meanwhile, the Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (Hesco) also cut off electricity connections to several government departments, as it claimed that they collectively owe it Rs47 million.

The water board’s deputy managing director for revenue, Waqar Hashmi, told a meeting presided over by managing director Misbahuddin Farid that SITE Ltd had defaulted on Rs500 million.

The industrial estate had been notified about the unpaid bills, but it did not heed it. KWSB had no option other than discontinuing its water supply. Hashmi added that the SITE administration had sent the water board a cheque for Rs100 million to settle its water dues, but that cheque bounced the next day. It hasn’t gotten back to us yet, claimed Hashmi.

The managing director then directed officials to disconnect water supply to the industrial estate until it cleared its dues in full, and also asked the revenue department to continue recovering unpaid bills from other defaulters.



KWSB supplies five million gallons of water to SITE on a daily basis. While talking about its own expenses, Farid said that KWSB is a public utility that brings water from reservoirs that are located 200 kilometres away. It also incurs charges related to pumping, filtering and chlorinating the water, and also has to pay for diesel and electricity.

Hesco discontinues electricity supply

Fresh from its stand-off with Hyderabad’s water and sanitation agency, Hesco disconnected power to multiple government departments on Wednesday. The power utility claims that it has carte blanche approval by water and power secretary Nargis Sethi to collect unpaid bills from government departments.

Hesco spokesperson Sadiq Kubar said that power supply to offices of the Directorate of Excise and Taxation, Rani Bagh, Office of Board of Revenue, Sindh Irrigation and Drainage Authority (SIDA), treasury department and the Sindh Cooperatives Housing Society has been severed.



These departments collectively owe the power utility Rs47 million, added Kubar. The spokesperson claimed that public and private consumers owe the power utility a whopping Rs44.1 billion in unpaid bills.

Hesco also plans on registering FIRs under against those departments, added Kubar.

The power utility had earlier disconnected 3,319 electricity connections to public and private consumers in October over unpaid bills.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 6^th, 2012.