September 10, 2008	Wednesday	Ramazan 09, 1429

KARACHI, Sept 9: With the mercury rising to 37 degrees centigrade on Tuesday afternoon, the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation faced a shortfall of around 490 megawatts and carried out two spells of load-shedding, each roughly two hours long.

Also, the government directives of avoiding load-shedding during Sehri and Iftar times seem to have been ignored by the power utility, which opts for load-shedding whenever it has to.

However, KESC officials say they have devised a strategy to carry out load-shedding during the day in an attempt to overcome the shortage of electricity before the Iftar time.

The KESC assertion appears to be true because a large number of residents calling from Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Federal B Area, Nazimabad, North Nazimabad, North Karachi ,Shah Faisal Colony, Landhi, Korangi, Orangi and other parts of the city told Dawn that outages spiked in the afternoon and petered out as the day wore on.

However, they said they were most inconvenienced by daytime power outages as they made the September heat utterly intolerable.

Sources told Dawn that the KESC’s own generation stood at a little over 900 megawatts, with the Bin Qasim power plant generating less than its optimum capacity and the KTPS not operational. The electricity from the desalination power plant was also not available.

They also said the privatised management of the KESC had reduced its procurement from the independent power producers on the plea that the electricity provided by the IPPs was costly.

They added that new connections were also not being issued by the KESC even to domestic consumers. They said that while the KESC had received around Rs90 million from prospective customers, it had made no effort to issue connections to them.

No spokesman for the KESC was available for comment.