Through these columns I would like to highlight the excruciating ordeal that old citizens of this beleaguered city have been going through at the hands of the KESC for the last five weeks. I am aware that my fellow citizens are also suffering at the hands of the same organisation but I think our case is unique and defies logic and reason.

The PMT on Nabi Bux Road exploded some five weeks ago and despite innumerable complaints, representations, requests of all kinds the KESC simply refuses to repair or replace the PMT, leaving thousands of people to suffer in this suffocating heat.

It is ironic to note that when the power company started supplying electricity to this metropolis, the third connection that it installed was in this very same area at the residence of Hashim Gazdar, former mayor of Karachi.

Another eminent person of the same locality, A.B. Gazdar, served the same KESC for 37 years with distinction and during his stewardship the organisation scaled great heights of efficiency and earned trust and respect of consumers.

I would like to ask my fellow citizens as to why the KESC has chosen to mete out this inhuman treatment to the people of this locality who are living here as peaceful and law-abiding citizens for the past 250 years.

Of course, any appeal to the administration and the government will be futile as they are up to their ears in solving the lofty matters of state and anyway they will never understand the dumbness of the ordinary people who do not turn on the airconditioner if the electricity for the fan is not available (Marie Antoinette anyone).

If KESC officers are forced to live in the one/two-room tenements of the locality without lights, fans and water, they will not be able to survive even for four days.

F.A. FAREED Karachi