KARACHI, March 22: Power breakdowns occurred in many localities in the city on Monday despite the fact that mercury dropped to 38.5°C.

An official of the Pakistan Meteorological Department told Dawn that the hottest day of the month was March 20 when the temperature had risen to 42°C.

Residents of the areas affected by Friday night's power breakdown said power supply had not yet been normalized. They said the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation failed to provide them uninterrupted power supply for the past three weeks.

On March 19, a fault occurred in the Jacob Line grid and the Garden grid, which caused at least 35 feeders to trip. Calling Dawn at around 8pm, a resident of Garden said his locality had been without electricity for the past three days. He severely criticized the KESC.

A resident of North Nazimabad said he wondered why so many power breakdowns were occurring in March. "The weather is likely to become hotter in the coming months. I shudder to think how many power breakdowns will occur in May and June," he said.

When contacted, a KESC spokesman claimed that the 74 complaint centres of the KESC received around 700 complaints on a daily basis. "A lot of times people do not lodge complaints.

The KESC has no way of finding out whether a power breakdown has occurred in a locality or not. In any case, the number of power breakdowns has come down," he said. However, some callers disputed the claim of the KESC spokesman, saying that quite often KESC complaint centres did not register complaints. "They either keep the phone engaged at all times or do not answer the phone at all. In this way, they do not register complaints."

KESC sources told Dawn that apart from the localities which had a major power breakdown on Friday, Landhi, Liaquatabad, Saddar Town areas, Surjani Town, Kharadar, Purana Golimar and Lines Area had also suffered power breakdowns.