May 4, 2002	Saturday	Safar 20, 1423

KARACHI, May 3: Prolonged power failures continued to plague the lives of more than 1.7 million consumers of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation on Friday.

The former district Central of the city recovered from a 48-hour-long power shutdown on Thursday because of an accidental fire at the area grid station which was compounded by six main cable faults in Federal B Areas.

Sources in the KESC told Dawn that Federal B Area, North Nazimabad, Gulistan-i-Jauher, North Karachi, Nazimabad, Parsi Colony, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Shershah Colony, Gulzar-i-Hijri and other areas remained without electricity for long hours.

A resident of Federal B Area, Block 14, said his locality faced a power shutdown everyday at night. “My area complaint centre has two telephone numbers: 637-8120 and 637-8121. While one number remains incessantly engaged, nobody picks up the other phone as it keeps on ringing. Once I managed to get hold of them. The telephone attendant said the complaint centre was not aware of the fault in Federal B. Area. He said he would look into the matter. Then I called 118. The telephone attendant said some areas of Federal B. Area were facing electricity problems because power was being shifted from one area to another.”

A resident of Gulzar-i-Hijri said that at night they had a prolonged power shutdown. “It is no use calling our composite complaint centre. Whenever, we call them, they say that they are aware of the fault but could not do anything about it because their vehicles did not have wireless systems and they could not be informed.”

Calling from Block 14 of Gulshan-i-Iqbal, a resident said that his locality also faced power shutdowns at night. “A large number of apartments in my locality pilfer power. As a result, the power load increases manifold at night. I recently saw an advertisement in the press in which the KESC urged consumers to inform it about power pilferage. I called my regional complaint centre. They said they could not help me. They gave me a telephone number saying I should talk to the zonal manager. It was a wrong number. I called my complaint centre again and told them that the telephone number they had given me was incorrect. They, however, insisted that the telephone number was right.”

A resident of Parsi Colony, Kaizad, wondered why the KESC did not announce a loadshedding schedule in advance so that people could plan their life according to the schedule. “If I had known last night that we would have a power shutdown in the morning, I would have ironed my clothes for work last night. My horror knew no bounds when I found this morning that my clothes were unpressed and we did not have electricity.”

A resident of Clifton, Block 5, phoned the Dawn office to say that his apartment had been with power for the last five hours. He said his family lived on the eight floor and it was not possible for his elderly mother to climb eight flights of steps.

A resident of Defence, Phase 2, also called in to say