Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) has condemned lodging of an unjustified FIR against the utility on road cutting for electricity fault repair in Lyari and demanded that the FIR be withdrawn immediately otherwise all maintenance work could be brought to a halt in that area. As a result, consumers of Lyari could suffer long undue outages of power.
While referring to the recent overreaction by local government officials over KESC's routine development and maintenance work, the utility said that the fault repair work under discussion had been carried out on priority basis as Lyari is sensitive area from law and order point of view and the elected representatives and law enforcement agencies always were in a hurry to get power supply restored there. KESC had duly followed standard operating procedure before taking up road cutting work and the place had later been restored as per requirement.
However, the unaware officials of the local government had expressed their insensitivity to the precarious conditions of that area by taking extreme step of lodging an FIR against the utility, while actually no damage to the road had been left unrepaired by KESC after completing fault repair work. This improper approach towards public service job could lead to complete suspension of all maintenance and development work in Lyari which might cause prolonged outages for power consumers in that area. KESC advised the officials of local government to take the public issues and local conditions seriously and refrain from jumping to ill-advised and uncalled for steps like lodging FIRs against public service utilities like KESC in the future.-PR