HYDERABAD, Sept 24: Power consumers took to the streets across the city Saturday evening following Hesco’s disconnection of power supply to the Water and Sanitation Agency’s water reservoirs.

The protesters blocked a section of the National Highway and Al-Rahim shopping centre road, leading to traffic chaos, which aggravated as Hesco refused to restore power supply despite a request by Sindh chief minister.

The protesters held demonstrations, raised barricades and lit bonfires on main roads.

Hyderabad DCO Ahmed Bux Narejo said that at first the Hesco authorities did not accede to the chief minister’s request which led to serious water shortage.

“But when people took to the streets the Hesco authorities have now decided to restore electric supply,” he told Dawn.

WASA managing director Shafiq Arian said that power supply had been disconnected on Friday evening to a few installations and Saturday supply to all sewerage pumping stations and water supply installations was cut off. Hesco spokesman Mohammad Sadiq said that 1800 connections were disconnected, 1500 pertained to private consumers and 300 government connections.

It had been done under federal minister’s directive issued at a recent meeting of distribution companies of Wapda hence Connections to WASA and other provincial departments were cut off, he said.

He said that WASA alone owed Rs18.42 million.