KARACHI, Aug 7: The city continued to face power closures — in the form of either loadshedding or power breakdowns — as a chastened Karachi Electric Supply Corporation ate its words on Wednesday and declared that it did not “believe in blaming others for city power shortage and resultant loadshedding”.
On Tuesday, a KESC spokesman had said the power utility was not being allowed by the Water and Power Development Authority to shift the Jamshoro circuit 1 to the bay of the Pipri West circuit, thus forcing it to resort to loadshedding.
Calling from Clifton, Block 5, a resident said his locality had been plagued by frequent power shutdowns which was a constant source of anguish and torment to his family members.
“My daughter is expecting and she finds it difficult to bear with long hours without electricity. Why can’t the KESC come up with a loadshedding schedule?” he demanded.
Another resident of Clifton, Block 5, told Dawn that power shutdowns did not follow a schedule. “We have power shutdowns in the morning, in the evening and at night — practically any time.”
A resident of Federal B Area, Block 7, said his locality had been without electricity for the previous four hours. “We had a long power breakdown on Tuesday night.
Lately there has been some problem with the KESC transmission and distribution system in Federal B Area but the power utility seems to have done nothing to rectify the fault,”he said.
In Malir, Phase 2, there had been a power shutdown earlier in the day for more than two hours, a resident told Dawn.
A resident of Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Block 5, told Dawn that his locality faced a recurring fault — breakdown of one of the three phases. “One power phase keeps breaking down. We lodge our complaints with our complaint centres and with 118. The KESC vehicles do not show up during the day. They come to our places at night.”
A resident of PECHS, Block 2, told Dawn that the previous night his locality had had a power shutdown two times between 10pm and midnight. “We had another power closure earlier in the day,” he added.
Meanwhile, the KESC spokesman claimed that the city power supply was being maintained satisfactorily round the clock. The KESC, he admitted, itself considered loadshedding an unpleasant option during which the engineers and workers had to work four times more than the normal job.
He said the power shortage in Karachi was about 500 megawatts which was being constantly met by Wadpa which meant that as per present demand one-fourth of the city was being fed with Wapda supplies.
Even at the time of shortages at the national grid, Karachi got the first and best share of available power from Wapda, he pointed out.
According to the spokesman, the KESC-WAPDA-Jamshoro-link is a constantly monitored as it is used at the maximum capacity but the constant load on the line which, when shut down for maintenance, perpetuates the shortage of power supply in Karachi.
He said the Wapda circuit under maintenance had been finalized at their end and its testing on the KESC side would also be over by Wednesday night.