KARACHI: Wires broke, feeders tripped and pole-mounted transformers blew up. As soon as the first welcome drops of rain fell in the hot and dry city, power became an issue almost everywhere.

While in some areas such as the Defence Housing Authority and Malir, electricity was restored in around two and an half hours, there were places where it could only be restored after 12 to 14 hours and some that were still without power at the time of filing this report.

Also read: Karachi receives first monsoon shower

And as more dark clouds formed over the city on Wednesday evening, citizens faced more trouble as far as continuous supply of electricity was concerned. A severe scarcity of water, too, was experienced as a result of power breakdowns at the Dhabeji pumping station.

“We could see the dark green K-Electric trucks in our area hours after the rain had stopped and still they couldn’t restore power to our area. One wonders what they were doing there,” said Syed Hassan from Gulistan-i-Jauhar.

“Why can’t our power distribution system withstand heat or rain? It is not like that in the rest of the world where people experience extreme weather conditions and rainstorms, too,” commented another resident from DHA phase 7.

“One thing I just don’t understand is that when we complain to the KE about an outage they first ask for our account number obviously to check whether we have paid our bills. Are they all about making money now? Are they not concerned more about the comfort of their consumers?” said Asad Ali from Garden East.

Water crisis

Meanwhile, Karachi experienced a shortfall of water due to an extended 19-hour outage at phase three of the Karachi Water Sewerage Board’s Dhabeji pumping station.

The outage started on Tuesday and by the time power could be restored there at 7.30am on Wednesday the city had been deprived of 180 million gallons of water. The KWSB thought that it would take two to three days for things to return to normal. In addition to this the KWSB spoke of another power breakdown at their Gharo pumping house at 3.25pm on Wednesday that stopped the supply of water from there.

Speaking for themselves, the K-Electric claimed that power supply in all affected areas had been reinstated before 5am on Wednesday after 117 of its 1,450 feeders tripped due to rain.

The KE through a press statement said that heavy winds and rainfall in some parts of the metropolis on Tuesday night caused sporadic tripping, but their rapid response teams rigorously worked on reinstating the affected feeders in order to fully restore power supply to Karachi.

A KE spokesman added: “Due to heavy winds, many trees which had not been pruned collapsed in some parts of the city while causing electrical wires to break. But KE’s emergency response teams immediately began work to reinstate power supply by tending to the faults across the city.

“The delays in restoration were caused by stagnant water collecting in areas after rainfall. The maintenance of these trees and streets is solely the municipal authorities’ responsibility, which they neglected and the blame for the arising faults fell on the KE.”

It was also pointed out that for some areas infested with illegal connections, the KE carried out a precautionary shutdown as it became a safety hazard.

In response to claims made by the KWSB, the press statement added that power was being supplied as usual to the Gharo, Pipri and Hub pumping stations.

However a portion of the Dhabeji pumping station witnessed a power breakdown due to some cable faults.

The restoration teams persistently put in all efforts round the clock to restore power supply to the water pumping station.

The KE spokesman further added that the KWSB was liable to pay Rs38 billion in dues to the KE and that the management of the water utility had failed in determining a secure, alternate power source to continue water supply operations and left no opportunity in shifting the blame on the KE.

Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2015

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