KARACHI, May 19: The Sindh governor’s committee tasked to improve the working of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation has instituted an inquiry to determine the cause of the prolonged power breakdown on Sunday.

A press release issued by the KESC quotes the minister of state for water and power, Mir Khalid Ahmad Lund, as expressing his concern over the Sunday’s power shutdown at a meeting of the Sindh governor’s committee here on Monday.

The press release says that at the outset of the Sindh minister for local government, Mohammad Hussain, suggested that the committee should look into the causes of Sunday’s power shutdown. It adds that the committee decided that an inquiry be conducted to fix the responsibility for the electricity breakdown which caused inconvenience to the public and triggered public protests.

Meanwhile, the unrepentant KESC once again failed to provide uninterrupted electrical power to its consumers on Monday.

Besides, the army-run power utility did not deem it proper and fit to explain why on Sunday it had been so slow in responding to people’s complaints about prolonged power-cuts.

However, sources told Dawn that the power shutdown had been carried out to overcome the shortage of 60 megawatts due to closure of a generation station for maintenance purposes.

A resident of Bhittai Colony said on Monday his locality had been without electricity for more than three hours. He added that on Sunday the locality had been without electricity for a little less than five hours.

A KESC consumer, calling from Nazimabad, Block 3, said 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.”

He 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 Gulshan-i-Iqbal wondered why the KESC claimed that it was not carrying out any loadshedding.

“Last night, the locality on our left side 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 will be our turn to lose electricity. Sure enough, at 2am the area on our right regained its power supply and we lost it.”

A resident of North Karachi, Sector 11-A, said while his locality had not had a full power breakdown, they had not been able to use electrical appliances because the voltage had been very low.

“We had no option but to switch off our refrigerator and TV sets and tubelights. In effect, we suffered a power breakdown. We ran our fans at a very low speed for a while but I was afterwards informed by a friend of mine that low voltages affect the copper winding of fans. So we switched that off too.”

An irate resident of Liaquatabad told Dawn that his locality had been without electricity for hours on end.

“I think the people of Liaquatabad should also react like the manner in which the people of Old Golimar and Baghdadi who had burnt tyres on roads in protest against prolonged power breakdowns.

Calling from Defence, Phase II, a resident 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 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 the KESC would restore our power supply whenever it could do that easily.”