KARACHI, Aug 3: A large number of Karachi residents endured another day of unbearable heat and humidity without electricity as the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC) resorted to about 400-megawatt load-shedding on Friday.

While the utility maintained that only one and a half hours of load-shedding was being carried out, a number of areas did not have electricity for more than three hours, at least three times during the day.

The Korangi Thermal Power Plant (KTPS) developed a fault and ceased generation. As a result, power outages hit areas including Orangi, Baldia, Nazimabad, North Nazimabad, Federal B Area, Shah Faisal town, Malir, Korangi, Jacob Lines, Gulshan and Gulistan-i-Jauhar.

The KESC refuses to admit to its failure in rectifying numerous cable faults. It has been using cable faults and “rotational load dumping due to overloading of feeders” to cover up for its depleting generation capacity and inability to check line losses, despite having received warnings from concerned quarters to shape up its generation and distribution systems.

The problem of load-shedding has been compounded by the Siemens-led O&M contractors’ decision to retire one of the KTPS units without adding another generation facility. Though the ‘experts’ are now responsible for generation and transmission, power outage in the metropolis remained widespread on Friday.

Last winter, the utility’s Siemens-led O&M contractors claimed that they had reinforced the power transformers of various grid stations to minimise system overloads and consequent load-shedding in the 11kv network.