July 15, 2008	Tuesday	Rajab 11, 1429

KARACHI, July 14: As the mercury shot up to 34 degrees Celsius with 66 per cent humidity on Monday, the city experienced more than eight hours of staggered load-shedding as the privatized Karachi Electricity Supply Company faced a shortfall of 500 megawatts in meeting the demand.

The power outage was caused by problems faced by the utility’s Bin Qasim plant’s Unit 6, but the utility’s management was not prepared to admit this.

Moreover, unit nos 1 to 5 of the Bin Qasim generation facility have not been giving the desired output. According to sources, each unit should have at least generated 170MW. But they were producing 110MW or less. Unit no 6 of the Bin Qasim Thermal Power Station has not been available due to an unspecified technical fault since Monday morning.

The situation is so severe that the power utility has resorted to load-shedding at a time in two groups.

KESC consumers had to go through the ordeal of load-shedding stretching over two hours, at least thrice a day. In some areas it extended up to four cycles of load-shedding. On every occasion, residential or commercial consumers complained of total lack of response from the utility.