KARACHI, Sept 11: The city's power crisis persisted on Saturday as a fire broke out at the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation's Bin Qasim station in the morning.

Officials of the city government's fire department told Dawn that they had dispatched two fire brigade vehicles to the Bin Qasim power station early in the morning. They said a small fire had broken out at the fifth unit of the power station which was extinguished easily. They said a vehicle of the Port Qasim fire brigade had already reached the spot.

However, a spokesman for the KESC said that no fire had broken out at the Bin Qasim power station. He added that at least one unit of the power station was down, with the result that the power station was generating only 700 megawatts.

The spokesman said that on Saturday afternoon the overall power demand of the city was 1,500 megawatts. He added that the KESC had not yet been able to determine what had caused its main cable to trip on Friday. He said that at present KESC engineers were bringing all their energies to bear upon the rehabilitation of the entire distribution network.

He conceded that distribution breakdowns were occurring in many localities of the city.

A resident of Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Block 4, told Dawn that their locality had experienced a power breakdown far longer than the one faced by the city. "Yesterday we lost electricity at around 1pm while the city faced a power breakdown in the evening. While their power supply was restored by midnight, our power breakdown continued into the night. Electricity was restored in the morning for a short while, but we experienced another prolonged power breakdown in the afternoon," he said.

The resident said his relatives in Block 14 of the same locality had also experienced a prolonged power breakdown.

A resident of North Nazimabad, Block L, contested the KESC's claim that Friday's power breakdown had hit only erstwhile Districts South and East. "Our locality experienced a prolonged power breakdown on Friday evening. Our power supply was restored by midnight, but we lost out electricity in the early hours of Saturday," he said.

A resident of Liaquatabad told Dawn that a couple of blocks in Federal B Area had the power shutdown at 7am on Saturday. He said that the complaint centre of his area had not responded to consumers' complaints, adding that their phones had either remained unengaged or unanswered.

A resident of Defence, Phase VI, wondered when the power supply would be restored completely.

"The KESC officials at the complaint centres come up with strange excuses. They told me that the city was experiencing the aftereffects of the major power breakdown, as if it was a big tremor that had pummelled the city. Besides, they could not tell me exactly why the main power cable from the Bin Qasim station had tripped. They said they were focussing on restoring power supply to the city. How can they carry out the rehabilitation process without first figuring out why the power breakdown had occurred in the first place?" he wondered.