The Express Tribune reported that in a surprise move on Tuesday, Pakistan Steel Mills claimed that Karachi Electric Supply Company has to pay it outstanding dues of PKR 130 million in electricity bills.

PSM 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 PKR 52 million.

PSM said “The power cut of PS has caused losses of up to PKR 60 million because PS administration had to divert power to residential areas from its plant operations.”

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 PKR 52 million to KESC in September bills.

Pakistan Steel had paid over 75% ie PKR 170 million of the total PKR 222 million of its dues to KESC, a few weeks ago.

The statement said that KESC cut PS’s power supply for the PKR 52 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 organizations 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 PSM because the latter had failed to commit on its outstanding dues of PKR 52million 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.

(Sourced from The Express Tribune)