KARACHI, June 6: Power failures continued to occur on Thursday as the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation claimed that it had stopped loadshedding in the city.

A KESC press release says that hectic efforts by the management has helped in improving the KESC power availability position and, therefore, there will be no more loadshedding which was announced last Tuesday.

Calling Dawn office at around 9pm on Wednesday, Shaukat Ali, a resident of Garden East off Britto Road, had said his locality had been without electricity since noon. On Thursday he informed Dawn that his locality had received electricity after a lapse of 23-and-a-half hours at 11.30 in the morning.

Calling from the Korangi Crossing area, a resident said that his locality had suffered worst power breakdowns over the past couple of days. “Power failures continue almost all night and there is little respite from power cuts in daytime. The areas that suffer because of power failures are Allahwala Town, Altaf Town, Korangi Industrial Area and others.”

A resident of Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Block 14, said his locality had also been facing intermittent power breakdowns since Monday.

“I live in apartments where a number of people pilfer power. The KESC does nothing to detect such power theft. Naturally it has a shortage of power but it does nothing to cut down on power pilferage.”

According to the press release, a KESC spokesman said that loadshedding was not only a source of suffering for people, but also an undesirable option that the KESC was forced to exercise because there was no other remedy to overcome power shortage.

He said the present power cut was overcome with a request to the Water and Power Development Authority to defer the maintenance shutdown of its Jamshoro circuit for some time while the availability of natural gas for SITE and Korangi Gas Turbines would also improve by June 15 as promised by the Sui Southern Gas Company.

Meanwhile, the managing director of the KESC, Brig Tariq Saddozai, directed the zonal managers to improve the performance of complaint centres under their jurisdiction and reduce the repair time.

Speaking to the officials at the monthly meeting of zonal managers and controllers billing here on Thursday, Brig Tariq said monthly reward and punishment would be the focal point of these meetings.

He said the zones showing performance would be acknowledged but those demonstrating neglect would be punished.

The performance indicator, he said, would be consumer satisfaction, control over power theft, performance of complaint centres and recovery of bills issued during the month. But, negligence in service to consumers and unwarranted delay in the repair of localized faults would be punishable.

The KESC managing director said that the mobile repair workshop should be fully utilized for repair of MTLs after office hours and at night in case of defects.