KARACHI, Oct 6: People continued to suffer intermittent and prolonged power failures in various localities due to mismanagement on the part of the Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation.
Residents of Baloch Para and Patel Para staged a demonstration in protest against the KESC after enduring a 12-hour-long breakdown.
They took to the street and block vehicular traffic on Jehangir Road. Police rushed to the spot and persuaded the angry citizens to clear the road. They assured the agitators that they would help restore power supply by approaching the KESC with request to repair the fault at the earliest.
On their assurances, the protesters dispersed peacefully.
People from many areas of the city complained of intermittent disruption in power supply while consumers from several localities said they experienced breakdowns spanning more than two hours for twice or thrice on Friday.
However, a spokesman for the KESC claimed that the power utility, faced with a shortfall of 44 megawatts in power generation, had to apply one-hour load-shedding on a rotation basis across the city. He said that there was no major power breakdown in the distribution system.
He said that on the directives of the federal minister for water and power, the KESC would start receiving an additional supply of 25 megawatts from Wapda through Hubco link, 20 megawatts from the Pakistan Steel and another 20 megawatts from the Korangi Thermal Power Station.
Besides, he added, the KESC would also install additional power generators to share the load of the overloaded power transformers in certain areas to overcome breakdowns.
He expressed the hope that the load-shedding would be done away with from Monday next as desired by the minister.
Contrary to his claims, there were widespread complaints of from various localities about frequent power breakdowns of long duration.
A resident of Block-16/A, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, said that power supply to his locality remained suspended for two hours in the morning.
Residents in Federal B Area’s blocks 17 and 20 said that electricity played hide-and-seek throughout the day. A resident of Block-15 of the same area said that the power supply to this locality was suspended for two to three hours for several times during the day.
A consumer in Pak Kauser Town, Malir, said that the power went off for four hours in his locality, adding that such a situation had become a routine. He said that there had been no respite from the prolonged breakdowns despite several complaints having been lodged with the local complaint cell.
An irate consumer from Sadiqabad, in Orangi Town’s Sector 11½, said that power supply to his locality was suspended for four hours.
“My daughter is sick and she was being administered a drip when power went off. Due to the breakdown, her condition deteriorated and I frantically called KESC people and requested them to restore power supply. However, their attitude appeared quite indifferent. They either did not receive the call and when they picked up the receiver, they did not tell me about the reason of the suspension of power supply.”
A resident of Gulshan-i-Iqbal’s Block-13-D/III said that power cuts with regular intervals had become a routine in his area.
“Whenever I complained to the local complaint centre, the KESC people would say that the transformer of this area is overloaded and gets tripped repeatedly. How long will it keep tripping? When KESC knows about the excessive load on the transformer, why don’t they replace it with one having matching capacity? They can also install an additional transformer to divide the load?” he argued.
KARACHI, Oct 6: People continued to suffer intermittent and prolonged power failures in various localities due to mismanagement on the part of the Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation.
