KARACHI, May 26: Electricity consumers across the city endured more than 10 hours of power outages, which began on Sunday night, owing to a lack of interest of the privatized management of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation in enhancing generation and providing relief to the people.

As the mercury touched 31 degrees Celsius with 61 per cent humidity on Monday, the KESC was facing a shortfall of about 415 megawatts due to the closure of the recently repaired Unit 3 of the Bin Qasim power plant due to leakages in its boiler, sources said on Monday. At around 4pm, the power deficit was around 416MW.

On Sunday night, Unit 4 had developed a fault, causing sudden and prolonged outages several times at night and during the day. Each spell was more than two hours long, but KESC officials were not admitting that there were faults in Units 4 and 3 of the Bin Qasim power plant.

The Bin Qasim units which have the capacity to generate 210MW each were in fact generating about 160MW, which had added to the pressure on the utility.

According to insiders, the power outage is deliberate because the management has not cleared dues of the Pakistan State Oil, which in turn has slowed down supplies. And the utility, which has burdened consumers with increasing fuel adjustment charges, was in fact using gas, instead of oil, for power generation. This has been done in total disregard of public inconvenience.

Insiders fear that if the situation persists for another day or two, people will resort to violent protests. There are projections that the peak demand would be in the vicinity of 2,700MW this summer, leaving a shortfall of about 600MW because the KESC has not been able to enhance its generation capacity and upgrade its distribution network. The utility is not likely to have 2,100MW available power. But the KESC chief believes that the peak demand will be around 2,500MW this summer.

Bin Qasim’s one unit is out for repairs while the rest are operating at much below their capacity.

Since Sunday evening the situation of power supply in the city has been deteriorating due to tripping of a generation unit of the Bin Qasim thermal power station.

Several major residential parts of the city came under prolonged power outages on late Sunday night, causing serious discomfort to people, especially to students preparing for various exams.

Several residential and commercial localities of the city suffered multiple spells of power breakdowns during the day and at night.

Already 80MW from the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant were not available since Tuesday.

A spokesman for the KESC said that power supply from the desalination plant of the DHA had not been available since Sunday evening while a generation unit at the Korangi thermal power station, producing 80 megawatts power, was out of order.

The spokesman claimed the shortfall of electricity was ranging between 100MW and 300MW in the midst of summer owing to which load- shedding of two-hour duration was being carried out separately in the day and evening hours while there was a last spell of one-hour load- shedding in the night.

He said the deterioration in the power supply situation was often compounded in several areas by frequent faults in the power transmission and distribution systems. He, however, denied that there was tripping of any unit at the Bin Qasim facility.

Insiders say the KESC management is not admitting that the power outages were due to load-shedding and blames it on “faults” in the system. But the spokesman could not explain how such a massive “fault” could develop in the system across the city at the same time.