Load-shedding persists in Karachi

The Karachiites continued to suffer from load shedding on Friday as KESC failed to meet the city's power supply demand.
A large number of complaints about repeated interruption in power supply from various localities of the city were received. The affected areas included Burns Road, Sindh Secretariat, Pakistan Chowk, North Nazimabad, Guru Mandir, Garden East etc.
Whereas Liaquatabad, Karimabad, Azizabad and adjacent localities of Nazimabad, PIB colony, Hasan Square, Civic Centre and Gulshan-e-Iqbal were already been notified by KESC to experience power shutdown for few days due to fault in a cable connecting Liaquatabad grid with Haroonabad grid.
It should be recalled that a seven kilometre underground extra high tension cable connecting Liaquatabad grid with Haroonabad grid had developed a fault on Wednesday.
But, the people of the notified affected areas complained that instead of 40-50 minutes rotational area-wise load shedding as announced by the corporation, they had been facing prolonged power outage of as long as 16 hours.
However, many other city localities that were not included in the areas affected by the cable fault also faced power breakdown, which added to their miseries already caused by the strike announced by MMA. The already apprehensive people of the city, majority of which avoid any undue risk remained indoors but could not save themselves from the wrath of KESC.
People from different parts of the city complained that despite their repeated calls to KESC's complaint centres, no one bothered to address the problem and most of the calls remained unattended.
Residents of Burns Road, Pakistan Chowk and other adjoining areas mentioned that they had a sleepless night on Thursday as these parts experienced night long power outage.
In North Nazimabad people faced early morning load shedding, while in Garden and Guru Mandir power broke down in the evening.
A point to note is that contrary to high-electricity demand of the city as one of KESC's main excuses for frequent and prolonged load shedding in Karachi, power outage remained unabated in various parts of the city despite considerable low power consumption on Friday as majority of offices, institutes, shopping, business and commercial centres were completely shutdown due to the strike.