KARACHI, June 23: The Karachi Electric Supply Corporation failed to provide uninterrupted electricity to its consumers on Monday.

Calling from Federal B Area, Block 14, a resident said that her locality had been without electricity since 12.30pm on Sunday. She said, “It is 7:00pm now and power supply has not been restored as yet. Whenever, we call our regional complaint centre, we are told that major fault has occurred in the locality which would take some time to be rectified. They, however, do not clear as to what fault has occurred and how long it will take to rectify it,” she remarked.

Calling from Pak Colony near Old Golimar, a resident said that his locality remained without electricity for two to four hours on daily basis.

The chairman of the SITE Association of Industries, Haroon Farooqi, criticized the performance of the KESC, saying that over 40 per cent of power shut downs occurred due to breakdowns and tripping at grids, as the KESC kept its transmission and distribution system in such a poor condition.

He said that last Friday a shortage of electricity and overloading of transformers, respectively, accounted for 36 per cent and 23 per cent of power shut downs. Even on Saturdays and Sundays, the position was not very encouraging.

Out of 59 feeders in the SITE area, 90 per cent were victim of overloading and tripping, he said. As a result, frequent breakdowns were occurring with two to three hours interval and the industrial units were trapped in between the coming and going of power supply, he added.

He said that industries could not run smoothly and costly machinery was being damaged. Billion of rupees’ production was at stake, while the government was losing its revenue of Rs70 million rupees per hour in SITE area alone, he said.

Farooqi said that tripping of feeders had become a routine, which probably was not being taken up seriously and was resulting in heavy production losses.