KARACHI, April 12: Fewer power breakdowns on Saturday seemed to bear out the claim made by the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation that the number of power cuts had decreased significantly.
In a press release, a spokesman for the KESC said: “The number of electricity complaints registered and repaired by the 60 KESC complaint centres during the last 24 hours has reduced to around 3,800 compared to 5,200 on April 9.”
Nevertheless, sources working in the centralized complaint centre of the KESC, better known as 118, told Dawn that they had received power complaints from North Karachi, Shah Faisal Colony, KDA Scheme 1, Surjani Town, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Clifton, Nazimabad and Cosmopolitan Society near the mausoleum of the Quaid-i-Azam.
The KESC spokesman said: “Nearly 60 per cent of the registered complaints are rectified within two hours, 26 per cent within four hours, while the remaining 14 per cent, which are due to underground cable faults, replacement of a burnt-out pole- mounted transformer, faults at substations or a breakdown in narrow lanes or congested areas where the KESC motorized ladder vehicles cannot reach for such areas bamboo ladder are manually carried out by KESC workers to repair the faults, take more than four hours.”
He explained that the use of electricity more than the sanctioned load by some of the consumers led to power disruptions and overloading of power transformers and feeders which either tripped due to capacity constrains or were shut down due to overheating. He added that in such cases restoration of power supply might take 60 to 90 minutes.
He said: “The power peak demand of 1860 megawatts in the year 2001 and 1885 megawatts in 2002 was in the month of June while this year consumption has already reached 1862 megawatts in April 2003. Karachi is an energy deficient area. More power generating stations are required to meet the increase in power consumption since the KESC cannot put up power plants. Because of the process of privatization, the private sector should come forward and put up power stations to meet the ever-increasing demand.”
Meanwhile, a caller from Korangi Crossing told Dawn that his locality had faced several prolonged power breakdowns over the past few days. He observed that while his locality remained without electricity for long intervals, a so-called posh area nearby always had electrical power.
A KESC consumer from Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Block 13-D-1, called to say that on Saturday his regional complaint centre finally sorted out his problem. “It looks that the KESC attaches importance to press clippings, for the power utility rectified the fault only when it got reported in the newspapers. It should, however, evolve a mechanism whereby its complaint centres could effectively sort out complaints.”