KARACHI, May 22: Meteorologists agree that May is the hottest month of the year in Karachi. The mean maximum temperature for the month is 36 degrees Centigrade. May also holds the record for the highest temperature 48 degrees Centigrade. And yet the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation (KESC) has carried out eight-hour pre-announced shutdowns in more than 50 localities of the city over the past 18 days without the slightest regard for consumers who spend hours without electricity in sweltering heat.
The KESC engineers concede that in most cases pre-announced power shutdowns from 9am to 5pm nearly never end on time.
The system under repair is energized four or five hours after the deadline.
Analysts recall that the KESC announced so-called “system improvement shutdowns” on May 1, 3, 8, 12 and 19. They point out that the power utility has effectively deprived half the city of electricity for more than eight hours at least for one day over the past two weeks. In addition, power breakdowns caused by a variety of faults continue to occur.
“One wonders why this system improvement exercise is not carried out in winter. The KESC perhaps wakes up to the seriousness of the situation only when its transmission and distribution network begins to collapse in summer, particularly in May,” says an analyst, adding that every summer the KESC promises that the next summer will see fewer power cuts. Such promises mostly remain unfulfilled, he says.
According to a spokesman for the KESC, the reason why the utility cannot suspend its system improvement work in May is that it is working to a deadline.
“For years, the government made no investment in the KESC infrastructure, which was in bad shape when the army took over the administration in 1999. Even then, it was decided that the KESC would be privatized as it was. It was in December 2002 that the government made system improvements plans and started to execute them,” he explains.
The KESC spokesman says the system improvement plan has to be completed by 2007.
Is the deadline so sacrosanct that allowances cannot be made for consumers already harried by oppressive heat? “No, we do realize that summer temperatures make power cuts all the more intolerable,” says the KESC spokesman, “and that is why the system improvement exercise is carried out at a slower pace in summer. But this exercise cannot come to a standstill because of summer or any other factor. Perhaps if the government had consistently invested in the KESC infrastructure over the years, we might have been able to break for summer.”
But the question that remains unanswered is why so many power breakdowns occur in most localities of the city on a daily basis in spite of the fact that the KESC says it seeks to improve its network, rain or shine.