Daily Times

KARACHI: In the matter of Motion for Leave for review filed by K-Electric against National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA)’s decision of Rs10 million of penalties, the authority dismissed the review motion and upheld its previous decision. In March 2016, the NEPRA imposed penalties on the K-Electric to the extent of Rs 10 million in which, fine of Rs 5 million was imposed on the K-Electric over failure to ensure uninterrupted power supplies and fine of Rs 5 million was imposed for underutilization of its own plants.

It is important to mention here that, the regulatory authority, citing particularly the performance of the K-Electric in June 2015, when about 2,000 people got expired due to heat wave, said extended hours of load shedding, system failures and power supply breakdowns were noted in the service territory of the utility. But, K-Electric maintained that the system failure in June 2015 was due to heat wave, which was unprecedented.

Meanwhile, K-Electric had filed Motion for Leave for review and a hearing in this regard was held on July 14, 2016 wherein K-Electric raised the grounds that the Nepra did not specify which laws have been violated, supplying of uninterrupted electricity is not legal obligation of the K-Electric, the power utility never deliberately under-utilized its available generation capacity, the delay in restoration of electricity was beyond the control of the company and the findings of the fact finding committee has not been shared with K-Electric.

However, the Nepra noted that the submissions made by the K-Electric do not fulfill the requirement of regulation 3(2) of the NEPRA (Review Procedure) Regulations, 2009 as the petitioner has failed to point out discovery of new and important matter of evidence or point out any mistake or error apparent on the face of the record in the impugned decision and no other sufficient reasons have been submitted, which warrant review of the impugned decision. Further, the submissions made in the instant review proceedings are the same submissions which were made in reply to the Show Cause Notice by the petitioner.

“The said submissions were duly considered and discussed upon in the impugned decision, therefore, there is no need to discuss and elaborate upon them in the review proceedings”, said NEPRA.

Therefore, the authority said in its decision that the instant Review Motion is hereby dismissed and the impugned Decision dated 25, March, 2016 is upheld.