KARACHI: Electricity breakdowns across city aggravate: Sufferers see foul play
By Arman Sabir
KARACHI, Sept 22: Power consumers on Thursday accused the KESC of ‘engineering’ faults in its transmission and distribution system in order to save the utility from being privatized.
They observed that KESC management and staff did not want the institution to be privatized because of vested interests. They would not care about the sufferings of its consumers while using different tactics to achieve their objective, they added.
Quite a big number of consumers making calls to Dawn after getting perturbed by the frequent and prolonged shutdowns over the last few days pointed out that the KESC complaint centres’ number ‘118’ had been kept busy or was not being attended by the staff.
A woman consumer calling from KDA Housing Scheme No.1 recalled that during the process of privatizing PTCL, the organization’s staff had been staging protests against the move and in their campaign, they had rendered many telephone lines out of order to force the government reverse its decision. Toeing the same line, she said, the KESC staff was now creating a similar situation to show that the KESC infrastructure had no attraction for an investor.
She said that the power supply was being suspended for no less than four hours in the morning and for a same duration in the evening.
A frustrated consumer in Jamshed Road area, Shehla Fateh, said that her mother was a heart patient and had suffered a lot when the KESC suspended power supply to the area for many hours in the morning, afternoon and night. “We have been made to spend sleepless nights because of the power breakdowns,” she said, and added that no one at 118 or other given numbers would attend telephone to note down the complaint. She said that the utility service must be privatized without any further delay.
Residents of Garden East complained that they had been suffering owing to frequent power failures for several days.
In Sector 14-A, Shadman, people experienced an eight-hour-long breakdown – from 6pm on Wednesday to 2am Thursday – before facing three spells of power cut from 9am to 10am, 3:30pm to 4:30pm, and 7:15pm to 10pm.
Similarly, power consumers in Saudia Colony, Pak Kausar Town and parts of Khokhrapar said that they were being punished for no fault of theirs as the KESC had resorted to load-shedding almost every day from 10am to 3pm.
Residents of Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Block 18, complained that power supply to their locality was discontinued at 2:15pm and restored only at 3:30pm. They said that the shutdown had become a routine, especially during night hours. Similar complaints were received from Block 16 of the area.
A disgruntled consumer said that the situation in Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Block 13/D/III, had deteriorated over the past few days as power would usually go off for several times in the day for long spells.
Another consumer said that in Block-3 of Gulshan-i-Iqbal, power supply played hide-and-seek.
In Block L, North Nazimabad, people braved at least three power breakdowns of two-three hours on Thursday. Some localities of the block were still without power till midnight.
A resident of Malir Colony, Block A-2, said that power supply was being suspended at 6am and 6pm for several hours as a routine for many days. Despite frequently lodged complaints, there was no respite from the painful experience, they said.
Frequent breakdowns of long durations were also received from blocks 8 and 9 of Clifton and the localities along the M.T. Khan Road.
