SUKKUR, June 28 The overloaded city grid station has become a nuisance for the people of Sukkur, causing multiple problems of power outages, frequent tripping of feeders and breakdowns.

Many people have lost their electronic appliances because of frequent variation in voltage.

The grid station was constructed 30 years ago for ensuring smooth supply of power to the city. Two transformers with the capacity of 10/13MVA each were installed in the grid station, which cater to the needs of feeders of Military road, Bunder road, Shikarpur road, Mir Masoom Shah, Bachal Shah Miani, Shahi Bazaar, Nishter road, Pakistan railways, New Barrage and that of Shamsabad.

Bachal Shah Miani feeder caters to the requirement of the rural area near the city and the remaining nine feeders are meant for the city, including main business centres.

The grid station is overloaded for the last five years, but it is not upgraded due to the reason best known to the Hesco authorities.

In January, a heavy duty transformer of 40MVA was installed at Site grid station to help share the load of the grid station.

So far only two feeders of Site grid station have been shifted to the newly-installed transformer.

People say that priority should have been given to feeders of the city grid station which has become dangerous because of overloading.

Now the situation is turning worse because load on the grid station further increased due to extreme hot weather, causing frequent tripping of the feeders and variation in voltage.

According to a well-placed source in Hesco, it is due to the negligence that condition of the city grid station has become vulnerable. To avert any accident, the grid station officials are forced to shut down two feeders for more than one hour many times during 24 hours.

He said that when there was no loadshedding through the main system, people of Sukkur getting supply through the city grid station had to brave the brunt of prolonged loadshedding and frequent tripping of the feeders.

The source said that he failed to understand why load of more feeders were not shifted to the new heavy-duty transformer installed at Site grid station.

He said officials working at the city grid station were feeling in trouble because if anything went wrong, they would be held responsible.

One more thing added to the problems was that the grid station had become very old and its spare parts were not available, he said.

When contacted, the executive engineer of the grid station organisation Manzoor Kakepoto said that a transformer of 40MVA had been installed to shift the load of some feeders, but the authorities concerned were not providing panels required to shift the load of feeders on the new equipment.

He said that so far only two feeders of Jeay Shah and Qasimabad had been shifted to the transformer, though it could easily bear the load of 12 feeders.

This correspondent tried hard to contact chief engineer of Sukkur Hesco Shamsuddin Shaikh, but his cellphone was switched off.