KARACHI, Oct 3: People suffering frequent power outages were compelled to break their fast in dark on Tuesday while the Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation claims that it resorted to one-hour loadshedding on rotation across the city.

KESC spokesman said that the power utility faced 80-100MW shortfall in generation and resorted to one-hour loadshedding on rotation basis across the city. He said there was no major power breakdown or cable fault in the distribution system. However, he admitted that some localized faults might have developed in a few areas which were attended to and rectified accordingly.

He said that a decrease in complaints about power failures had been noticed which had dropped from 6,500 to 4,500 per day. All the complaints registered with the KESC were being attended the same day, he claimed.

On the contrary, citizens criticised the poor performance of the power utility saying that the KESC did respond to their complaints properly. A number of people criticized the working of centralized complaint number 118 saying that the number was often found busy.

Mohammad Shahid Qazi, a resident of Fatima Jinnah Colony, said that frequent power failures to his locality had become a routine. He said: “We were deprived of electricity at the time of sunset for three or four days since the beginning of Ramazan. I have lodged many complaints but to no avail,” he said.

The residents of Gulshan-i-Umair Society said that they were faced with intermittent power failures and the KESC officials claimed that the pole-mounted transformers were overloaded. “When they know the transformer is overloaded, why they do not put additional transformers to solve the problem,” an irate consumer residing in the society queried.

Calling from Block-12 of Gulistan-i-Jauhar, a consumer said that he was fed up with the frequent and prolonged power breakdowns. He said that many complaints were lodged with the centralized complaint number and the local office of the KESC but the situation did not change.

“Finally, I bought a power generator as we could not live without electricity for hours in hot weather,” he remarked.