City residents, traders irked by prolonged power cuts in hot weather.

Byline: Aamir Shafaat Khan

KARACHI -- Residents of Karachi and traders have been experiencing prolonged power cuts and unannounced loadshedding for the past few days in the prevailing hot and humid weather as well as facing the problem of overbilling by K-Electric, it emerged on Thursday.

However, the power utility linked the outages with a demand-and-supply gap and shortage of furnace oil.

Residents said that KE had either resorted to unannounced loadshedding or sent SMS alerts telling them that their area might experience power interruption and timings may vary.

They said if a person complained about the unannounced power cut, the KE replied that its 'teams are working to restore the power supply' with estimated time of restoration.

They also criticised KE for ignoring their complaints of overbilling.

Complaints of unannounced loadshedding, overbilling by KE are on the rise

Loadshedding time extended up to 10 hours

Asif Ahmed, a consumer from Korangi Crossing, said that his area had been facing loadshedding for a total duration of 10 hours a day, instead of six hours daily a couple of days ago.

He said that tripping was also a very common reason behind prolonged outages in his neighbourhood and whenever anyone lodged a complaint with KE it appeared that rectifying the fault was not their priority.

Another resident, Salman Ahmed Khan, tweeted about prolonged power failures in many areas of Karachi and said that it had become a very serious issue for those Covid-19 patients who were self-isolating at home.

People asked KE to realise the gravity of the situation in view of rising Covid-19 cases as most people did not have backup power supply system at home.

Many consumers said that KE had been switching off power supply to their areas soon after midnight on the pretext of some technical fault.

They said that people with no UPS or generator had no option but to come out of their homes, which made them more vulnerable to the coronavirus threat.

Areas like Mawach Goth and Baldia Town have been experiencing loadshedding in the middle of the night for the past many days.

Some areas, which are not on the high-loss list of KE, are facing power failure of two hours each three times a day.

All city markets facing loadshedding

The general secretary of the All City Tajir Ittehad Association, Ahmed Shamsi, said all markets of Karachi were facing power problems at a time when traders were trying to recover their losses incurred in the two-month lockdown.

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