KARACHI: Water supply to several parts of Karachi resumed in phases on Monday after electricity supply was resumed at the Dhabeji pumping station, around 22 hours after a power breakdown, Karachi Water and Sewerage Corporation spokesperson Abdul Qadir Shaikh told Dawn.

The spokesperson said K-Electric (KE) had restored power supply to the pumping station at 7:20am on Monday, around 22 hours after a cable fault suspended the supply at 8:43am on Sunday.

He said the “prolonged outage had resulted in a shortfall of nearly 48 million gallons of water in the city” and the affected areas included parts of North Nazimabad, Nazimabad, Gulberg Town, New Karachi, Landhi, Korangi and Scheme 33.

“Following the restoration of electricity, water supply to the affected areas has resumed in phases,” the spokesperson said.

The Dhabeji pumping station, Karachi’s primary water intake point, is highly dependent on uninterrupted electricity. Even brief outages result in immediate service disruptions.

The power breakdown on Sunday had resulted in the temporary shutdown of three pumps at Dhabeji, which KWSC initially attributed to a cable fault.

The water utility’s spokesperson had told Dawn that a technical team had reached the site to rectify the fault.

However, a KE spokesperson had clarified that the fault in KDA Pumping Feeder 2, which supplies electricity to the Dhabeji Pumping Station, “is internal in nature and is not related to K-Electric”.

“Power supply to 19 out of 22 pumping motors at the Dhabeji Pumping Station is continuing as normal,” the spokesperson had said, adding that a power utility team was in contact with the relevant authorities to assist KWSC in addressing the fault.

On Monday, after the power was restored, the KWSC official said while speaking to Dawn that the electricity supply had been disconnected due to a cable fault, and whether the fault in KE’s cable was internal or external, it was the power utility’s responsibility to rectify it.

Dawn reached out to KE for further details, but there was no immediate response.

Earlier this month, an electricity outage at Dhabeji had affected its K-2 Pump House, where the manifold chamber and main valves developed a fault. As a result, three major pumps at the K-2 Pumping Station had been temporarily shut down and water supply to several areas of Karachi was affected.

Last month, on June 1, supply from Hub Pumping Station was also suspended to parts of Karachi due to a fault in KE’s main cable. KWSC said that the power suspension had resulted in a daily water shortfall of 85 million gallons per day (MGD) for the city.

It was the third consecutive day of power failures at key pumping stations disrupting distribution across the metropolis.

On May 31, the city faced a shortfall of 122 MGD after electricity supply to the North East Karachi Pumping Station was disrupted due to a fault in K-Electric’s main cable.

The outage came just a day after an emergency shutdown at the Dhabeji Pumping Station, caused by a fault in a transformer at the grid station, forced 10 of the station’s 21 pumping units to shut down.