KARACHI, Oct 10: Irked by prolonged power failures in the commercial area of Saddar, angry shopkeepers blocked a portion of Abdullah Haroon Road near Zainab Market here on Tuesday.

As the Eidul Fitr is approaching, market activities are gaining momentum and in such a situation shopkeepers cannot afford prolonged power failures.

Due to prolonged power failure, the area people got provoked and blocked the Abdullah Haroon Road near Zainab Market to express their anger over the KESC’s poor performance. The police reached the spot and dispersed the angry people.

The area from Burnes Garden to the entire Saddar has been experiencing frequent cable faults for the past three days and the KESC officials took several hours to detect and repair the same.

However, the KESC, which claimed that there was no power loadshedding since Friday, said that a major cable fault developed in Saddar area resulting in the power outage.

Spokesman for the KESC said that the engineers and staff were at work to rectify the fault and it would be repaired late in the night. He said that the power demand was up to 2,000MW which was being met accordingly and the KESC did not need to resort to loadshedding.

Contrary to the tall claims by the KESC, the sources in the KESC said that the power utility faced 70MW power shortfall during the evening peak hours. The shortfall forced the power utility to resort to one-hour power loadshedding on rotation across the city, the sources added.

Besides, the residents of Khayaban-i-Badban in Defence said that they had experienced prolonged power suspension on Tuesday despite the fact that the KESC had claimed it would abandon loadshedding from Monday (Oct 9).

According to a KESC spokesperson, a cable fault developed on the 18th Street in Defence and will be repaired late in the night. The power supply to the locality will be resumed as soon as the cable fault was rectified, he added.

A consumer from Block-4 in Clifton said that the power supply was suspended four times on Tuesday. Each time, the span of power failure was between 30 to 90 minutes, she said. Another consumer from the same area said that frequent power failures had made their lives miserable.