KARACHI: A heavy thunderstorm on Sunday crippled the city’s fragile electricity network, causing power outages in many areas as around 180 feeders were not operational.
There were reports that several citizens in some areas had been electrocuted by live wires falling into pools of rainwater.
People were cautioned by the KESC to stay away from pools of water on the road in order to lessen the risk of electrocution.
The power supply to many areas was switched off soon after the first raindrops fell across the city as a ‘protective measure,’ even though the KESC claimed that none of its grids were affected by the rain.
A KESC spokesman claimed that there was no load-shedding on Sunday as demand and supply both stood at 1,700MW. He said all grids were normal and that the system was stable.
Sources, however, said that there was no electricity in Gadap and parts of Malir, Orangi, Landhi, Lyari, Shah Faisal, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, North Karachi, Nazimabad, Defence Phase I, and areas near Hub.
KESC authorities said they were mounting repair and rehabilitation work to remove faults.
The KESC spokesman claimed that the figures of feeders affected by the rain were exaggerated by the media and at the time of filing of this report ‘less than 30 out of a total of 1,106 feeders’ were to be normalised.
Meanwhile, business and industry leaders have taken strong exception to the KESC CEO’s remarks on power theft. Naveed Ismail, the utility’s CEO, had on Saturday alleged that businessmen and industry leaders were involved in power theft. The leaders maintained that industry was the major contributor of revenue to the KESC as it was among the major payers of bills. They said that to malign the entire community was ‘unfair’.
It may be pointed out that the KESC had mortgaged receivables from 400 leading industrial consumers with a bank in the past and it is maintaining a strong vigil on major energy consumers. The SITE Association’s Chairman, Engineer M.A. Jabbar, was extremely perturbed over the remarks of the KESC CEO and said that the utility ‘must put its own house in order and expose those involved in alleged power theft’.
He added that without ‘insiders’ connivance one cannot cut live wires or bypass meters’.
He said that industrialists were not opposed to a campaign against power theft, but felt it was a cover-up to deflect attention from the utility’s failure to meet the Sept 15 deadline given by the government to revamp its system in four towns of the city.
He also slammed the KESC CEO’s reasoning of linking an end to load-shedding with the public’s cooperation in a drive against power thieves. He urged the utility to fulfil its primary obligation of providing uninterrupted power supply, the lack of which had ‘ruined Karachi’s industry’.
Soure: http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/metropolitan/09-thunderstorm-cripples-kesc-network---szh-03
