KARACHI, June 30: People staged a demonstration on Dalmia Road in protest against long spells of power failures in their locality on Thursday.
Holding placards and chanting slogans against the ineffective performance of the army-managed Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC), they blocked the main road for traffic for hours.
Police reached the spot and tried to disperse the protesters, but instead, they pelted the police with stones.
The police then baton-charged the protesters to disperse them and opened the road for traffic.
People said power failures in Shanti Nagar and adjoining areas were a routine, adding that unannounced frequent power load-shedding had made their lives miserable.
Meanwhile in Garden East, over 10,000 residents, who have been facing many and long spells of power failures for the past 10 days, have urged the authorities to take necessary steps so that people are saved from the scorching heat.
Father Robert De Silva of the 75-old St Lawrence’s Church told Dawn that area people, majority of whom lived in small apartments in high-rise buildings were suffering from the power failures occurring due to faulty electricity lines.
He said he had visited the KESC’s Garden Complaint Centre, opposite to Ankleseria Hopital near Makki Masjid a few times and a KESC official there, Haresh Kumar, had informed him that power breakdowns were due to faults in a cable at the Sapphire Street, which would be rectified soon.
The priest said the cable was repaired but it developed a fault within a couple of hours. It was repaired for the second time, but it again developed a fault after a day.
He said residents had gone through three to four spells of power failures between 20 and 24 hours in the past 10 days.
He has urged the authorities to get the faulty cables repaired or replaced, and the system upgraded, to mitigate the sufferings of residents.
A resident of the Federal B Area said power went out in Block 15 due to some local fault affecting about 200 households at on Wednesday midnight. Electricity was restored only at 5am the next morning.
Almost 200 families spent a sleepless night, and quite a good number of them remained outdoors the whole night.
Another resident of the DHA Phase VII, fed up with the KESC’s poor performance, said power breakdowns occurred twice or thrice everyday. He said the span of each power breakdown was from one to two hours.
An irate consumer said power supply at Sarwar Shaheed Road and its adjoining areas, including police residential blocks on the Governor’s House road, was disconnected at around midnight on Wednesday. It was restored at around 1.15am.
Some residents from Gulistan-i-Jauhar, blocks 15, 16 and 17 said power supply was discontinued in their localities in the afternoon, and restored an hour and a half later.
Residents of blocks L, H and N of North Nazimabad too complained about frequent power load-shedding and regular power fluctuations in their areas.
They said that electrical appliances broke down due to these fluctuations, inflicting losses on the residents.
