Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) has invoked rain emergency plan on war footings to deal with the tripping of feeders, PMTs and supply lines all across the City after the first heavy downpour in the City on Wednesday night. In total, about 500 feeders had tripped with the first spell of monsoon rains in the night, a normal phenomenon as dust and other small particles over the cables and equipment settled down inside the feeders and PMTs with rain waters caused tripping.
KESC special task teams immediately normalised over 450 feeders till morning. Work on the remaining 50 feeders was in progress and was expected to be completed soon. Loadshedding schedule, in the meanwhile, had already been brought to normal position ranging from 3 to 4.5 hours. Industrial areas, sensitive connections and strategic locations remained completely exempted from loadshedding.
KESC reiterated advice to the citizens to exercise great caution while handling electrical equipment and generators at home and to keep away from fallen wires and poles. In case of any rain-related hazard or emergency, the general public needed not to try to tackle things on their own but to inform nearby KESC offices or Call 118 for help.
UNION: In spite of the peace agreement with the guarantee of local administration, the Union office bearers continued to sabotage and interrupt development work at KESC offices. On Thursday, KESC On-Site repair team was working to repair eight maintenance vehicles parked at IBC Defence D-2 (Akhtar Colony), which was interrupted by a group of union activists' led by Shaukat Sanwal. The attackers forced the team to stop work and deflated the tyres of all the vehicles. On the resistance of the members of the team, the union activists threatened them of physical attack.
KESC has strongly condemned the violation of agreement by the Union leaders and expressed great dismay over the fact that the vehicles direly needed at the time of rain emergency had been blocked from moving to repair local faults all across the city because of the union's highhandedness. KESC demanded of the local administration to immediately intervene into the matter and prevent any interference in the normal repair and maintenance work.-PR