KARACHI, May 12: The Karachi Electric Supply Corporation’s transmission and distribution system was racked by hot weather and gusty winds in many parts of the city on Sunday, resulting in prolonged power shutdowns.
Sources in the KESC told Dawn that in many localities, live power wires had come off electricity poles, unable to withstand the wind velocity in the early hours of Sunday.
KESC officials, however, claimed that the composite complaint centres of the power utility promptly sent vehicles to rectify the faults.
A resident of an apartment block in Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Block 13D-2, said her locality had been hit by continuous low voltage since the advent of the heat wave in Karachi.
She said that they had at least two power cuts everyday without fail, each lasting some one-and-a-half hours. She added that they also used to have night-long power shutdowns when the city temperature rose to over 40 degrees Celsius sometime back.
A resident of Orangi Town said his locality faced a power shutdown when a tree was uprooted by the powerful winds in the early hours of Sunday.
“Some people of the locality went to inform the KESC officials at a nearby complaint centre, only to find nobody there. They were told by a low-ranking official that other officials would come late because it was a Sunday. They waited for about an hour and then returned home. Later in the day, some youths visited the complaint centre again. There they had an exchange of hot words with the KESC officials who said that in retaliation, they would not send the KESC vehicle before evening. True to their word, no KESC vehicle appeared before Maghrib prayers. The KESC officials tinkered with the electricity pole for a while and then went away, promising to return soon. So far, we have been without electricity for about 16 hours,” they said.
Akhter Ansari, a former bureaucrat, called the Dawn office to express anger over the fact that telephones at the complaint centre in his area, KDA Scheme 1 Extension Society, had been incessantly engaged. He added that many air-conditioners had broken down in his locality.
A resident of Clifton, Block 9, phoned the Dawn office to say that his apartment complex had been without power for the last five hours.
A resident of Defence, Phase VI, also called in to say that his locality had been without power for quite some time.
Calling from Garden West, a resident told Dawn he had faced a power cut at 4pm.
A resident of Parsi Colony told Dawn her locality faced a power shutdown during the previous night. “Even today we had intermittent power shutdowns.”
