Turkish firm to run the city grids

TALAS — Kervan Elektrik, a Turkish electricity distribution operator, has won the tender to run the distribution network of Talas city and Talas District for 15 years, the Department of Energy announced yesterday. It is the first time a foreign company will run part of Irad's grid.

The network itself stays with the state distribution utility, which keeps the poles, wires and substations. Kervan takes over operations, meter reading and the collection of bills. It will be paid a fixed fee of 41 million som a year, plus a success fee of 35 percent of verified savings in network losses, capped at 22 million som a year. Losses, the share of power fed into the network that is never billed, stood at 16.4 percent last year; the target is 11 percent by 2031.

Sofya Kuznetsova, the director of the Department of Energy, said the contract would "bring us operating practice we have not been able to build ourselves". She said the department expected Nurzhan and the other districts to follow "on the same template" later in the year.

Not everyone in Talas is reassured. A city councillor asked what would happen to the utility's 400 meter readers. Ms. Kuznetsova said they would be offered jobs with the new operator. A pensioner at the utility's payment office on Toktogul Street was more direct. "In 1995 the Americans ran it, then we ran it, now the Turks will run it," she said. "I will still pay at this window."