18 July 2004	Sunday	29 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

KARACHI, July 17: Power breakdowns continued to occur on Saturday as consumers of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation said they were unhappy with the performance of complaint centres.

Calling from Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Block 14, a consumer said her locality had been experiencing power breakdowns for the past one week.

"Every time a power breakdown occurs I call the regional complaint centre to find out when the power supply would be restored. Quite often the telephone lines of the centre remainengaged. Even when one gets through, one fails to find out when the power supply would be restored because KESC officials seem to be so out of touch with one another that they cannot tell consumers exactly how long it would take for them to repair the fault," she said.

A resident of Buffer Zone, sector 15-A-1, told Dawn that his locality had been without electricity since 2pm. "We read in the papers today that action was taken against erring KESC officials at the centralized complaint centre. When I called 118, a telephone attendant said that he could not register a complaint because it was a scheduled shutdown. But then he said he could not tell me when the power supply would be restored. Why was it a scheduled power breakdown when the KESC staff did not know when it would end? Or, worse still, do they have a schedule for switching off power without a plan for restoring it?" he wondered.

Calling from North Nazimabad, Block D, Shamim Ahmad said that a power breakdown occurred in his locality after a very long time. "A couple of months back a faulty pole-mounted transformer was removed in our locality. This led to normalization of power supply for a very long time. Other than scheduled power shutdowns and loadshedding, we didn't have any power cuts. But apparently the transformer needs some maintenance, which is why it has started to break down," he said.

Sources in the centralized complaint centre told Dawn that complaints about power breakdowns had been received from Gulshan-i-Iqbal, North Nazimabad, North Karachi, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Clifton, Defence and Malir Cantt.