KESC to cut off electricity of govt hospitals if bills not paid in 3 days

Karachi : Karachi Electric Supply Company has served a final power disconnection notice to provincial finance department to pay the long outstanding dues of major government hospitals of Rs.210 million and warned that electricity of those hospitals would be cut off if bills were not paid within three days.

In a statement issued Wednesday, KESC stated that it served multiple notices to the EDO Health and other leading Govt run hospitals but to no avail and the power utility uptil now had been reserving its right to disconnect their power supply, primarily to prevent any inconvenience to the general public on account of non-payment by these public service institutions.

According to breakup, EDO Health owes KESC unpaid power bills around Rs.39.94 million; JPMC, Rs. 35 million; Lyari Gen Hospital, Rs. 5.3 million; Civil Hospital, Rs. 38.3 million; and other hospitals including Saudabad, Rs. 90 million.

KESC spokesman said the management of aforementioned hospitals were of the view that relevant ministry had not yet disbursed funds despite repeated approaches. He said KESC’s notice pertaining to power disconnection will come into effect if there is no firm action taken in the next 3 days to clear the outstanding dues of Rs. 21crores.

Since the past couple of years, it has been the policy of the KESC’s management to exempt these above mentioned leading public service institutions from load shedding and provide them priority service in case of any power failure or unplanned power outages, only in the larger public interest. However, the hospital managements, health department and the finance ministry have not shown any reciprocating response, as they have not been paying their electricity bills since long. In addition to the unpaid arrears the monthly bills are also accumulating, in return snowballing the already huge payable figure.

Spokesman added that this undue burden on the already constrained financial resources of KESC had left the utility with no option but to serve disconnection notices to these public health facilities in order to open the eyes of those responsible for payment of bills. KESC asked the concerned authorities to make immediate payment of pending power bills to save the general public from any trouble.