Karachi - K-Electric has rejected the show-cause notice of NEPRA regarding bogus and over billing by the power company.
Spokesman of K-Electric has released details of its reply to a recent show-cause notice from the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority. KE’s reply pointed out that the notice had been based upon NEPRA’s unproven assumption by applying an isolated incident of unauthorized emails upon the huge distribution territory of KE which was not supported by facts and which is against ethics.
Spokesman claimed that the notice wrongly claimed that KE had been indulging in bogus billing and the utility withheld material facts on the directions of senior management. The spokesman clarified that the alleged incident of over billing never took place as it was unearthed and stopped by KE at a very initial stage.
The alleged incident involved an ex-employee from one out of four regions of KE, who had issued mischievous and unauthorized emails to his colleagues and superiors. However, through quick and pre-emptive measures taken soon after the said emails were sent, KE management prevented the unauthorized move to materialize and no excessive bill was ever actually issued whether in the same region or outside. Therefore, the said allegations were preposterous and not based on any facts or documents. It was merely conjecture and surmise based on ignorance and misunderstanding which NEPRA should have cleared before passing such statements in its show cause notice.
KE said that NEPRA had fell victim to negative campaign spread by vested interests against the power utility and its private management. KE clarified that it had never authorized the said ex-employee to take the alleged action and had suspended him and conducted an enquiry to determine the facts. It was found out that the said person had breached KE’s employee code of conduct. In turn, the ex-employee, Shoaib Siddiqui had tendered his resignation.
KE was consulting its legal advisors with regard to the preposterous claims and exorbitant fine of up to Rs. 100 million that NEPRA was seeking to impose on KE without any basis in fact or law. In pursuance of such legal advice, KE had filed its suit before the Honorable High Court of Sindh challenging NEPRA’s show cause notice for failure to follow due process and other failures relating to openness and transparency in the manner in which NEPRA had conducted its hearings and enquiry.
The SHC had on March 26, 2014, issued notices to NEPRA and had clearly said that NEPRA was not to make any final orders in the matter without the permission of the Court. Needless to say, KE would be defending its position before NEPRA on the merits.
In the suit, KE had alleged that NEPRA had breached its own rules of procedure and had acted in a one sided manner without lawful justification and in reliance on unsubstantiated conjecture, rumors and speculation which was not permitted under the provisions of the NEPRA Act and its Fines Rules 2002. KE clarified that NEPRA was acting without any just cause and was pursuing a vendetta against KE’s senior management at a time when KE was suffering a liquidity crunch due to non-payment of receivables by the federal government amounting to over Rs. 80 billion, out of which over Rs 27 billion was owed by the federal government on account of KWSB and other entities controlled by the Government of Sindh.