KARACHI, May 5: Being the hottest day of the month, Monday saw a great many power breakdowns while the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation remained indifferent to the plight of its consumers.

On Monday, the temperature rose to 41.8 degrees Centigrade and the minimum temperature remained 25.5 degrees Centigrade. Humidity, or the amount of moisture in the air, rose from Sunday’s 12 per cent to 23 per cent.

According to the Met office, April 30, 2002, was the hottest day of the previous year when mercury rose to 43.4 degrees Centigrade.

A KESC consumer told Dawn late Sunday night that the residential block near Taj Medical Centre had been without electricity the whole day. “A room thermometer in our house read that the ambient temperature was 43.4 degrees Centigrade. It was awfully hot and we spent many hours without electricity. The regional complaint centre of the power utility took down our complaint every time we called it, but it did little to fix our fault,” he said.

He added that his complaint centre had not told him what had caused the power breakdown. “I asked them again and again to tell me why it was taking the KESC so long to fix the fault. I also demanded that I be told what the fault was, but the KESC telephone attendants remained tight-lipped about it, arguing that I would not be able to understand what the technical fault was. May be they have a point, but I should have been told why it had taken the KESC almost the whole day to rectify the fault,” he said.

A student calling from North Karachi, Sector 11-A, told Dawn that his locality faced a power breakdown every day. “We are having our exams these day and we are getting headaches by having to read at night by candlelight. Losing electricity every day has become such a ritual that when we do not have a power breakdown, we feel strange,” he said.

A consumer from Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Block 6, told Dawn on Monday that his locality had lost power supply around the Asr prayers. “We lodged more than one complaint with our centre but our power supply has not yet been restored.”

Calling from the same area, a consumer said that he had a prolonged power breakdown earlier in the day. “What I fail to understand is that why the KESC did nothing to keep its transmission and distribution system geared for the onslaught of summer while it had a lot of time to do so in winter.

If the power utility had maintained its transmission and distribution network properly, we would not have had to face so many power breakdowns.”

A consumer calling from North Nazimabad, Block I, said: “I have often been told by my regional complaint centre that a transformer has been switched off in our locality because of overloading. Why can’t the KESC announce this in advance?” he wondered.