KARACHI, July 29: Amid continuing rain on Tuesday many areas of the metropolis were without electricity for more than 30 hours as the KESC had not rectified all the faults, which had created water shortage in many areas and forced the city government to extend the summer vacations by a week.

A Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation spokesman admitted that the continuing rains were hampering its restoration operations. However, he claimed that “there were no feeder tripping, no extra-high tension tripping and no major breakdown despite the continuing downpour.”

On Monday and Tuesday six to eight feeders tripped, which were generally normalized within an hour. However, in some areas it took the KESC several hours to activate the feeders as repair work could not be undertaken in the heavy downpour.

According to a KESC spokesman a total of 64 trippings were managed by the utility and on 32 occasions feeders had to be shut down at the request of the residents or the city government due to earthing of current in various buildings and inundation of substations.

The utility claimed it changed six PMTs and repaired 22 of them while removing eight main cable faults.

A resident of Azam Basti, Malik Arif, complained that his area was without electricity since 3pm on Monday, which had created, among other things, a water crisis. He complained that no one was responding to the complaints of the residents.

Residents of C.P. Berar Society, block-3, complained that they were without electricity for the last 30 hours and the KESC officials were not inclined to register their complaint.

The KESC consumer said that when the residents tried to lodge complaints, they were told that water had flooded the Liaquat National Library substation and nothing could be done unless the rainwater was pumped out. However, the residents believe that the fault could be removed by rectifying the fault in the PMT.

Abdul Aziz of Sharfabad also had a similar problem. A similar complaint was received from Alamgir Road.

The residents said the KESC was not attending to their complaints and called for imposition of penalties on the utility for such problems faced by the consumers.

A resident of KDA-1 also complained of prolonged power breakdown. He said that the KESC staff was not addressing the grievance.

Complaints of prolonged power breakdown were also received from block-4A of the Journalists Society, where the residents were left without electricity from 3pm on Monday until 8.30am on Tuesday. After repeated interruptions, power supply to the area again stopped at 5pm.

Many people contested the KESC’s claim that it had rectified most of the faults caused by wire snapping.

Prolonged power outage was also reported in parts of Malir, Landhi, Korangi and Orangi.

Residents of Azizabad Block-8 and Federal B Area blocks 7,9, 14, 15 and 16 also had similar complaints. Residents of Bhittai Colony and Al Imran apartments, Sector 15A-5, Buffer Zone, were without power because no one had rectified the faults in the transformers.

An irate resident from Block-9, Federal B Area, said that the KESC had made it a routine to switch of power supply to the areas near the Mukka Chowk around sunset and restore it by 2am. He said the residents had complained to the KESC but to no avail.

According to the KESC spokesman, the main cause of delay in power supply restoration to many areas was accumulation of water inside substations of multistoried buildings. Owing to the reason many areas in Gulshan-i-Iqbal, including the Journalists Society, and Gulistan-i-Jauhar were without electricity as feeders were switched off allegedly at the request of dwellers of high rise buildings to avoid electrocution.

The spokesman said work was in progress in Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Malir, Landhi and Model Colony and power supply would be fully restored after rectifying the identified faults.