KARACHI, July 6: Thousands of people had to spend a sleepless night following widespread power breakdowns caused by the light showers on Wednesday night.

Power supply went off in many areas of the city soon after the first drop of the drizzle at about 7:30pm and could not be restored in most of the affected localities until Thursday morning as the obsolete and defective distribution system of the KESC did not respond to the remedial measures.

The drizzle struck quite a large number of feeders which got tripped and suspended power supply to a big portion of the metropolis.

The worst-hit localities were the city’s suburban areas, mainly Gadap Town where power went off at around 7:30pm on Wednesday and could not be restored till late Thursday night. Residents of Murad Memon Goth, Jam Goth, Old Thana Village, Mulla Issa Goth, Meeru Goth, Samo Goth, Shammi Goth, Jan Murad Jaffar Goth, Haji Miandad Goth, Sualeh Mohammad Goth, Purana Shafi Mohammad Goth, Darsano Channo, Katore and other areas said that the prolonged power failure had caused immense hardship to them.

Yusuf Baloch from Murad Memon Goth said that the KESC complaint centre numbers 4650745 and 4560600 remained busy all the time. When the residents of the affected localities proceeded to the complaint centre in Murad Memon Goth, the officials did not register their complaints, according to some of the perturbed people.

The residents of a posh locality in Defence Housing Authority also complained of intermittent power failures which forced them to spend a sleepless night. They said that power played hide-and-seek the whole night and throughout the day on Thursday.

A resident of J-Street, Phase VI, Defence, said that power supply was suspended three to four times during the previous night and the same was the situation during the day. Each time the span of power failure was 60-90 minutes, he said. The frequency of power failures has increase ever since the president and prime minister have taken notice of the crisis in Karachi and directed the KESC to ensure a smooth supply, according to him.

Shabbir Ahmed from Defence Phase II said that power played hide-and-seek during the night. He also complained that the KESC complaint centre numbers would remain either busy or unattended.

A complainant from Phase VII, main Khayaban-i-Bahria, said that power supply was suspended four times during the previous night due to which the residents could not have a sound sleep. He said that the intermittent breakdowns in power supply had become a routine but the KESC was doing nothing to improve the situation.

An irate consumer from Block-12 in Gulistan-i-Jauhar said that the power supply was suspended at 4am and restored after an interval of 13 hours, at around 5pm. He said the KESC officials attributed the breakdown to a cable fault. He said that the pole-mounted transformer of his locality was overloaded and the KESC officials had been requested to take some remedial measures. The youths of the area approached KESC officials with request to reactivate the PMT by switching on its circuit breaker. However, after waiting for more than an hour, they told the KESC people present at the centre that if nobody attended the complaint, they would switch on the circuit breaker on their own. If someone among them sustained injury, the responsibility would rest on the KESC, they warned.

On his part, a spokesman for the KESC claimed that there was no shortfall in power generation and, therefore, no load-shedding was carried out in the city. He said some cable faults in Defence and Gadap areas had caused suspension in power supply. The faults in Defence were removed whereas the repair work in Gadap was in progress, he added.