KARACHI: Residents of Karachi had to spend a sleepless night on Friday as the ill-maintained transmission and distribution system of the K-Electric experienced yet another fault.

Several areas of Karachi, including Old City Area, Garden, Jacob Lines, Gizri, Clifton, Defence, Federal B Area, North Nazimabad, experienced a power outage for hours starting 4am on Friday.

Know more: Karachiites endure daylong power outage

A spokesman for the K-Electric said that there was a tripping in the extra high tension (EHT) line which affected 12 grids out of total 62 grids in Karachi. “This happened at around 4am, and most of the grids were brought back on line immediately. After 7am everything was restored,” he claimed.

The problem, according to KE, occurred due to intense humidity in the air, which was more than 80 per cent on Thursday night. “But after the EHT line tripped, KE worked at normalising power to the feeders while providing back-up to various areas. Unfortunately, not all areas have the option of backup feeds but we did it where it was possible especially the sensitive areas of Karachi,” the spokesman explained.

While Dawn received complaints from residents of several other areas such as Gulshan-i-Iqbal and F.B Area about a prolonged power cut during the same hours, the K-Electric insisted that those areas were not connected to this fault. “These areas experienced other local faults. It’s just a coincidence that it happened around the same time,” he claimed.

Published in Dawn, August 2nd, 2014