KARACHI: Police keep watch as KESC men repair fault
By Our Reporter
KARACHI, June 22: The citizens of the city were set to spend another sleepless night as the recently revived Unit 5 of the Bin Qasim Power Plant stopped producing electricity after developing a major fault at around 9.30pm on Friday night. The fault has resulted in a shortfall of 250 megawatts, in addition to the already insufficient supply.
The closure of the same unit a couple of weeks ago had created a crisis-like situation in the metropolis and caused the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation to resort to excessive load-shedding, sparking widespread protests in many of the city’s 18 towns.
As the mercury shot up to 42 degrees Celsius with 52 per cent humidity on Friday, enraged consumers blocked Korangi Road, one of the main arteries of the city, as they were without electricity for more than 14 hours, witnesses said.
Residents of Akhtar Colony, who have been up in arms again due to the KESC’s failure to rectify cable faults, heaved a sigh of relief after the utility restored power supply at 8pm after replacing a damaged cable.
Police remained alert to avert any law and order situation as the KESC personnel repaired the cable fault in the colony, where the law-enforcement agencies had resorted to tear-gassing the agitated consumers on Wednesday night.
Power riots had broken out late on Wednesday night on Sharea Faisal and Korangi Road in which protesters had pelted a fast-food outlet, two banks and public property with stones besides suspending vehicular traffic.
As tension mounted, Adnan Bashir Khan, who is the director of operations since Siemens was given the job of operations and management of the utility, said that he had asked the TPO to contain the situation until 7.30pm, which was the time he hoped the line would be activated.
“The cable was damaged during excavation for development work and efforts to repair the damaged portion did not succeed. So the KESC decided to change the 500-metre-long cable,” said Mr Khan.
As the deadline passed and the tension mounted, the KESC was finally able to resume power supply to the area at 8pm.
According to sources, the utility was resorting to load-shedding to the tune of more than 150 megawatts since Thursday night when its Korangi Thermal Power Station became non-functional. It also affected the private sector Tapal Power Plant.
But Mr Khan insisted there was no load-shedding: “In places we are resorting to rotational load-dumping to overcome the problem of overloading of the system,” he said. Also, he had no clue as to why most of the rain emergency centres’ telephone numbers were not responding.
The KESC had publicised certain numbers in case of an emergency, but when this writer tried contacting those numbers, most of them did not respond, even after several tries.
There was no response from 118, the utility’s usual number for registering complaints, either.
KARACHI, June 22: The citizens of the city were set to spend another sleepless night as the recently revived Unit 5 of the Bin Qasim Power Plant stopped producing electricity after developing a major fault at around 9.30pm on Friday night. The fault has resulted in a shortfall of 250 megawatts, in addition to the already insufficient supply.
