THE authorities seem oblivious to the miseries faced by the people of Karachi owing to the electricity utility’s dismal performance.

It is barely three weeks since a political party called off its campaign to protest against K-Electric’s bad service and over-billing. However, for the past fortnight, the metropolis has been suffering long hours of loadshedding at least twice a day. In the lower income neighbourhoods, outages last longer. The most exasperating time of loadshedding is the one that is done after 11pm, as school going children are the worst sufferers.

When the Jamaat-i-Islami was protesting against K-Electric for excess billing and bad service, the situation was better. Why is the power utility management provoking citizens by resorting to frequent power failures?

Whenever a complaint about a power breakdown is lodged, the standard KE response is a cryptic text message ‘Technical reasons.’

Usman Ahmed Khan
Karachi

Published in Dawn, May 18th, 2017