KARACHI, June 14: Karachi Electric Supply Company has strongly condemned the rising streak of violence at its area offices by defaulting consumers, trying to pressurize for restoration without wanting to clear their default dues.
In a recent act of aggression at KESC's Garden area office by agitating defaulters of a PMT in Malbari Lines and Ambajivilljee PMT, where power theft is in the zone of 60 per cent and outstanding, unpaid bills are close to Rs. 10 Million. Often in such cases, the PMT's are rendered faulty due to the unauthorized connected load by the illegal power users. In the case of the Garden area PMT's, KESC issued the defaulting consumers several notices for clearance of bills and refraining from the illegal usage of electricity, if they wanted the utility to replace the non-functioning PMT's. However, they refused to cooperate and instead shifted their illegal load through unauthorized hook connections to another adjacent PMT, eventually overloading it to the point of it burning down as well.
Consequently, KESC officials held several meetings with the local MPA and area notables and sought their support for clearance of dues and curbing the menace of power theft. All the same, consistent with their non-cooperative attitude the defaulting power consumers refused to cooperate with their representatives as well and instead attacked the KESC Garden offices to demonstrate their vigilante attitude and lack of respect for the law.
Referrence to the recent multiple attacks at KESC's Khokhar Club office in Shah Faisal Colony by a mob of defaulting power consumers, KESC stated that almost half of the electricity supplied to the two defaulting PMT's is stolen, while the outstanding dues of the same, Rafi Garden PMT and Reta / Usman Medicos PMT was around Rs. 6 Million. These two PMTs had also been burnt down because of heavy illegal overloading.
On June 13, a mob of defaulters gathered at KESC's DFS offices in SITE area, to coerce the utility for the replacement of Haqqani Masjid PMT, which had outstanding default of millions on it, in addition to heavy overloading.
KESC said that the defaulters needed to realize their responsibility as electricity consumers, since the power utility has a zero tolerance policy for willful defaulters and power thieves. KESC asked the defaulters to refrain from taking law into their hands and instead agree to pay their bills and stop stealing electricity. Vandalizing KESC’s property and attacking employees will not ensure restoraton of their electricity supply. KESC has made it clear on many occasions that its policies are equal for all customers and it operates without discrimination and those who think that they could get away with violent and unjustified protests against it were sadly mistaken and in fact they are doing injustice to the good and honest majority of bill paying citizens.
