KARACHI, July 6: The transmission and distribution system of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation broke down in many localities when the city received a little amount of rain on Sunday.

Enraged citizens called from many localities of the city and demanded that action be taken against the army officials running the power utility at present.

Calling from Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Block 6, Mehboobul Hasan said that his locality had been without electricity from 3.30pm to 5pm. “Our power supply was restored for 40 minutes only. Then we had another long spell of a power breakdown.”

Mr Hasan added that he was a heart patient and it was very difficult for him to do without electricity.

Calling from Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Block 4, Qamar Raza said that since 3am two phases of his household power connection were off. ”At about 6pm we lost the third phase as well. We have been calling our complaint centre every hour since morning. They kept telling us that our power supply would be restored in an hour or two. They just told us that the fault in our locality would be repaired till late night.”

Calling from North Nazimabad, Block R, Zafar Bashir, said that his locality had been without electricity since 7am. “ Our power supply was restored only for 10 minutes. We had another power breakdown shortly afterwards. No body is answering telephone at our localized complaint centre.”

A resident called from Phase IV of Defence Housing Authority. She said: “We lost our electricity supply around 12.30pm. We have been frantically calling our complaint centre, but nobody is answering phones there.”

Akbar Baloch said that Old Thana, Jam Goth and Memon Goth had been without electricity since 6 o’clock in the morning. “All the telephones of our localized complaint centre have been engaged since morning. Because of the power breakdown, these localities are also in the grip of acute water crisis.”

Shahid Saeed called from Golf Course Road 2 in Phase IV of the Defence Housing Authority. He said that his locality had lost power supply at around 9am. “After an about 10-hour-long power breakdown, our electricity supply was restored at 7pm. The telephone number of our localized complaint centre — 5385004 — has been engaged since morning.”

Mr Saeed wondered why the KESC administration had not done anything to improve its fragile transmission and distribution system.

A resident of Federal B Area, Block 17, said that his locality had lost its power supply with the first drop of rain. ”Our power supply was restored around 1.30pm. We had another two-hour-long power breakdown,” he said.

A resident called from Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Block 3, to say that while the entire locality around her place had electricity, her street was experiencing a power cut. “Apparently our street is connected to the KDA market. For some reason, the KDA market is prone to having prolonged power breakdowns. Which is why our locality also experiences long spells of power breakdown,” she said.

Another resident of Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Block 14, said that his locality had a prolonged power breakdown.

KESC VERSION: A KESC press release says that cases of feeder trippings occurred with the rains, but timely attending the feeders the KESC staff normalized them. Initially about 30-40 feeders tripped and the same were normalized. Another batch of 20 feeders tripped around 2pm which were also attended. Then by 4pm about 20 feeders shut down which were attended by 6pm.