karachi
Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) is poised on the path to revival with the government-approved financial package of Rs18.5 billion. But the non-serious attitude of K-Electric is badly hurting the performance of PSM.
PSM management is confident that the timely release of the various tranches of the financial package will facilitate PSM in achieving 77% capacity utilization by January-2015 in accordance with the target given by the federal government.
On the other side, PSM management requested K-Electric several times to ensure uninterrupted power supply to this national asset to save it from irreparable damage.  PSM spokesman said that during the month of July-2014, breakdowns/trippings of K-Electric’s Gharo Grid-Station caused frequent and prolonged disruptions in supply of water which adversely affected the production of PSM. Consequently, all production units of PSM, with the exception of the Blast Furnace and Coke Oven Batteries, had perforce to be shutdown due to extreme shortage of water for the cooling systems. The Blast Furnace was kept on survival mode.
It is worth noting that K-Electric’s Grid Station at Gharo tripped at least 50 times since the fault first developed in February 2014. The tripping for most of time caused the 60 inch water supply pipelines to burst due to back pressure, he added.
Residents of Steel Town and Gulshan-e-Hadeed also faced hardships due to the acute water shortage. PSM management overcame the problems of residential areas by providing water through tankers as well as by regulating the supply of available water to these areas. It is pertinent to mention here that the first disbursement of Rs4.2 billion was received on 21st May 2014 instead of 1st week of May 2014. Consequently, raw material for production was received in 3rd week of July 2014. Hence, it is justified to consider 21st August 2014 as the date for achieving 20% capacity utilization.