KARACHI, May 18: Power failures on Saturday continued to baffle the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation which intensified its efforts to remove localized faults.
People calling from Defence, Clifton, Nazimabad, Muslimabad (New M.A. Jinnah Road), Federal B Area, North Nazimabad and Lea Market told Dawn that they had faced power shutdowns.
Emirali Ismail, calling from Nazimabad, Block 3, said that every day his locality had a power cut at least thrice, lasting more than two hours. “The KESC attributes power breakdowns to the heatwave, ignoring the fact that in Lahore, which generally remains hotter than Karachi, the power supply is not as elusive.”
Mr Ismail said that unannounced loadshedding had damaged home appliances of a large number of people who could take the KESC to court for this.
A resident of Federal B Area, Block 18, wondered why the KESC claimed that it was not carrying out any loadshedding. “Last night, the locality on our left remained without electricity from 11pm to midnight. On the dot of midnight, the area on our right plunged into darkness and the area on our left regained its power supply. We thought that soon it would be our turn to lose electricity. Sure enough, at 2am the area on our right regained its power supply and we lost it.”
Calling from 112/2, Phase 6, Defence, Mirza Najam Baig, said he had been informing his regional complaint centre about power failures in his locality for the last four days but to no avail. ”The recently-inaugurated complaint centre in Defence failed to remove the power faults in our area. I went to the KESC office where somebody assured me that the fault would be removed shortly. But when I called the complaint centre afterwards, somebody misbehaved with me and said that whatever I did the KESC would restore our power supply whenever it could do that easily.”
Meanwhile, the KESC managing director, Brig Tariq Saddozai, directed the KESC zonal managers, executive engineers and assistant executive engineers of the distribution department to visit complaint centres from 10pm to 1am for speedy mending of the localized cases of power failure.
A press release issued on Saturday said the KESC managing director had reviewed a presentation on the newly-established central information centre for regular management update about the city power distribution system and effective monitoring of the KESC power complaint centres.
The KESC managing director said the distribution engineers should not sleep in their homes while the electricity consumers remained awake due to non-availability of electricity.
He also directed immediate setting up of a mobile motor-mechanic workshop for attending to vehicles of the complaint centres in case electricity repair vehicles developed faults after office hours or on a holiday.
