KARACHI, June 24: The Karachi Electric Supply Corporation failed to restore power supply to many parts of the city till last reports came in on Sunday night and hundreds of people kept making frantic calls to the newspaper office complaining that they were without electricity for more than 30 hours.

The power supply in most of the 18 towns was suspended when a dust storm followed by heavy rain hit the city at around 4pm on Saturday.

The complainants also deplored that the mobile and land line numbers given by the KESC were not being attended. They said all designated cellphones were switched off and the land line numbers were found busy all the time.

People staged protest demonstrations and lit bonfires at many places, including Jehangir Road, Model Colony in Malir, Abul Hasan Ispahani Road, Sohrab Goth, Rashid Minhas Road near UBL Complex, and Nala bus stop Godhra in New Karachi. They raised slogans against the power utility and demanded restoration of power supply to their respective areas.

Sources in the utility said that the newly-appointed CEO of the KESC, S.M. Amjad, who is a retired army officer, failed to provide any relief to consumers. He did not come up to their expectations, rather, he caused the collapse of the system, they observed.

They criticised the KESC Operation Director, Adnan Bashir, belonging to a contractor firm ‘Siemens’, pointing out that he did not have any past experience to run a power utility. He had miserably failed to pull the utility out of this crisis, they added.

Mr Adnan Bashir, whose mobile number is 0300-8222723, could not be reached for his comments as his cellphone remained off.

The sources claimed that the senior executives and chief engineers with a long experience of handling the crisis-like situation had been sidelined and the entire system was being looked after by Mr Adnan Bashir, an IT professional. They said that no standard operational procedure or rain emergency plan was in place even though the Met office had forewarned heavy rainfall. It was the first time that an emergency plan was not prepared to tackle the situation.

The sources said Mr Bashir, who was the staff officer of the former German managing director of the KESC, had been removed on serious charges of mischief. However, he was appointed as director operations by the Siemens towards the end of last year, they added.

The sources said that the senior executives and engineers of the KESC were dejected and demoralised due to the wrong decisions and mismanagement on the part of the top hierarchy of the corporation and Siemens had attempted to purchase a 20-year-old used power plant after declaring it a new one. Later, the KESC’s board of directors, at a meeting held in December last year, revoked the deal. However, no action was taken against those responsible for striking the wrong deal.

Officials in the KESC said on Sunday that the utility’s distribution network in Federal B. Area, North Nazimabad, Nazimabad, Rizvia, Liaquatabad, Orangi Town, Malir, Landhi, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, parts of PECHS, Defence Housing Society, etc had collapsed.

Soon after the collapse of the KESC system, the staff at the utility’s customer centres ran away from their offices fearing mob attacks. The centralised complaint number ‘118’ had also gone out of order due to the rainfall. The KESC management did nothing to get the complaint phone numbers restored. In many areas, the KESC vehicles were seen parked in the compound of the area police stations to save them from attacks by angry power consumers. The drivers and technical staff had disappeared.

An irate consumer, Talib, calling from Rizvia-2, opposite Kiran Hospital, said that the power supply to his area was discontinued at 3:30pm on Saturday and was not restored by Sunday night even after the lapse of more than 28 hours.

Aleem Khan from Gulshan-i-Iqbal’s Block-3 said that the power supply was suspended at 8pm on Saturday and remained so until midnight Sunday. “We have water in our underground tank but we cannot pump it to overhead tank in the absence of the electricity,” he said.

Ms Jamilul Rehman from PECHS said that a wire snapped in her street and the KESC men could not fix it despite the passage of 30 hours.

Residents of Block-2, 6, 10 and 15 of the Federal B Area said that the power had gone off soon after the rainfall on Saturday and could not be restored by Sunday night. A consumer from Shah Faisal Colony No.5, Bareli Colony, said that the area was without power since 5pm Saturday.