KARACHI: Almost half of the city plunged into darkness late on Wednesday night when Karachiites suffered the fifth power breakdown within a month. This time round there was no word of clarification from K-Ele­ctric on the cause of the breakdown.

The electricity supply to several areas in all districts of the city was cut late on Wednesday night and took a few hours to be restored.

The areas affected included Malir, Landhi, Korangi, blocks of Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, North Karachi, residential blocks of Scheme 33, Federal B Area, Defence and Clifton.

Only on Oct 20 Karachi had suffered a major power breakdown. The power utility had blamed “sudden tripping in transmission line of national grid” for last week’s failure of its system.

However, the reasons for the fresh breakdown remained undisclosed.

Instead, K-Electric in its statement released details of its scheduled maintenance operation in different areas on Thursday.

“Due to a maintenance shutdown, power supply in parts of Gulshan, Johar, Sharifabad and Baha­durabad remained affected between 11am and 4pm on Thursday. Power supply to affected areas was restored as soon as the maintenance work [was] completed,” it said.

Before Wednesday’s and Oct 20’s breakdowns, Karachi had suffered crippling of its power supply system thrice in October alone which was blamed on “adverse weather conditions resulting in abrupt disconnection of power supply” and “sudden tripping in transmission line of national grid”.

Strong reactions from political parties representing Karachi and even Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah taking ‘notice’ of the power breakdowns in the city have failed to improve the power supply situation.

Despite widespread public outrage against power outages, the country’s power watchdog, National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra), has not yet intervened to grant any relief to the masses.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2018

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