KARACHI, June 27: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s suggestion that the federal government should pay KESC consumers’ bill for the month of June is gaining support among the general public as the utility’s top-heavy Siemens-led management failed to restore power to many areas even five days after the collapse of the entire network last Saturday.

Even in the areas where electricity faults have been removed, consumers are facing voltage problems and complaints of damage to electrical appliances are piling up at the KESC centres.

The CEO of Siemens, Suhail Wajahat, is out of the country at a time when the city is enduring a serious power crisis and his company is also under fire. Dejected by the policies of the new management, senior engineers have left the KESC. Chief Engineer (Generation) Saeed Mahmood is among them, according to sources, who said that since he left the utility a month back, KTPS was lying non-operational and the Bin Qasim power plant was constantly developing serious faults.

Enraged power consumers, including businessmen and traders, are refusing to pay their bills not only for the month of June, but also for the past several months because the utility had not provided them uninterrupted electricity, causing them a loss of billions of rupees.

The affected people are asking the MQM to use its leverage with the government to get the KESC privatization reversed or, at least, get it freed from the clutches of the Siemens-led management.

An extremely anxious caller had a sorrowful story to tell this scribe. Mrs Kashif Alvi, a resident of Maymar Tarrace, Block 2, Ghulshan-i-Iqbal, stated that her family was among scores of families who had moved to some other places after undergoing a traumatic ordeal of living without power and water for more than four days. She said there were countless families living in different apartment blocks in her area who had no alternative place available to them to move to. She said she had come across some of them who were facing a famine-like situation and had to look after sick and disabled family members along with small children, desperate for water and sound sleep.

Ms Alvi said she herself had repeatedly contacted every available KESC official with a request to get the fault rectified but to no avail. She said she talked to City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal who accordingly directed the KESC official concerned to restore power.

“The KESC men did come and after checking the cables, assured us that the fault would be rectified by 1:30am Wednesday. However, it didn’t happen and upon asking again, they said there was a cable fault and nobody knows when will the electricity be restored,” she said, adding that her family had to move out of the area as nobody could endure this agony for an indefinite period.

Similar stories were narrated by the residents of different parts of the city where power had not been restored since 4pm on Saturday.

Residents of the Friends Heights, a residential apartment in North Nazimabad, had to spend 72 hours without electricity and water because the KESC’s ‘imported’ experts had no idea how to join the HT link. After removing a fault, they were facing the problem of low voltage.

Residents of PECHS, blocks 2 and 6 complained a vast area of their neighbourhood was without electricity since noon and no one was responding to their telephone calls. Residents of 13-D, parts of Block 6 & 10 of Gulshan-i-Iqbal and some blocks of Gulistan-i-Jauhar were also without electricity since 10am.

The governor has made it clear that the utility’s management must show results because it was getting all assistance and support from the federal and provincial governments.