GUJRAT, Sept 18: A large number of residents of Karimpura on Saturday strongly protested against the Gepco city sub-division office in Lalamusa for not restoring power supply to their locality for more than 22 hours.

Reports said electricity to around 300 houses was suspended in Karimpura when a transformer installed on the Church Road broke down on Friday night at about 9pm.

The Gepco sources claimed that the city sub-division office did not take the new transformer from their nearest store but adopted a 'novel' way to restore the supply which resulted in inconvenience to residents of another locality.

The staff removed the damaged transformer to their office, carried a repaired one from the workshop and took it to Normal School area from where they replaced the working transformer with the repaired one at night, the sources said.

As a result residents of Normal School area had to face power suspension for more than two hours. In the morning they tried to replace the Railway Road transformer with the one removed from the Normal School, they said. However, people gathered at the spot and foiled their bid.

Later, the Gepco staff sent a written demand for a transformer to their Gujranwala office to restore power to Karimpura.

However, electricity supply to Karimpura was suspended till the filing of this report at about 7pm on Saturday.

Requesting anonymity, the Gepco sources told this correspondent that the staff had done that to 'facilitate' some 'illegal' plastic pottery factories in Karimpura whose owners were allegedly stealing power and evading sales and income taxes.

A line superintendent said that they had to go through this process because the power of the burnt transformer did not match with the repaired one.

"To match the power we were left with no other option."

He denied that any Gepco staff was patronizing power thieves.