KARACHI, Oct 13: Citizens continued to suffer power outages on Monday as the lingering electricity crisis worsened with the KESC’s new management curtailing supplies from the independent power producers and limiting its own generation to save on fuel cost.

Irritated with prolonged spells of power outage coupled with unattended faults in many residential and commercial areas of the city, people criticised the Karachi Electric Supply Company’s new management for raising the tariff and over the deteriorating conditions since Sunday night.

Small traders, enraged over the reported hike in power tariff, decided to withhold the payment of electricity bills and planned protest demonstrations across the city from Tuesday.

In total disregard to the city’s electricity requirement when the mercury climbed up to 36.5 degrees centigrade, the power utility carried out load-shedding for several hours across the city. People braved prolonged outages as the utility faced a major shortfall due to less generation from its own plants and failure to exploit the full potential of the independent power producers.

A KESC spokesman said a 250-megawatt shortfall forced the utility to carry out load-shedding with intervals in different parts of the city. He conceded that the shortfall had increased since Sunday but did not give any reason when asked whether it was due to tripping or less generation by any of the utility’s units.

Well-informed sources, however, said the shortfall was over 300 megawatts on Monday. The KESC was able to supply around 1,940 megawatts though the city’s demand rose to 2200 megawatts in the peak hours. Of 1,940 MW available with the power utility, the KESC produced 940MWs through its indigenous plants while the remaining power was borrowed from Wapda and other sources, they said.

The sources said instead of the 1160-MW cumulative output the Bin Qasim Thermal Power Station produced 740MWs electricity because only two of its six generation units were operating to their full capacity. Unit No 1 produced 160MWs; Unit No 2 produced 80MWs and Unit Nos 3 and 4 generated 70MWs each, while Unit Nos 5 and 6 generated 185MWs each.

They said despite the city’s requirement and utility’s capacity to improve the output, three units were subjected to below par operation.

Expecting over 100 per cent increase in their electricity bills of the coming months, people from different areas criticized the new management for not ensuring uninterrupted power supply for a single day. Instead power supply was not available in many areas for more than eight hours daily, they complained.

A sudden depletion of hydel source of energy due to much curtailed releases from Tarbela and Mangla and less gas supply due to some work in Qadirpur gas field provided justification to the KESC for reduced generation, the sources said.

Residents of Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Gulstan-i-Jauhar, Nazimabad, Federal B Area, Malir and some other localities complained about prolonged load-shedding since Sunday night.

A resident of Gulshan-i-Iqbal Block-2 told Dawn that they did without electricity in the small hours of Monday. There was no electricity in their area from 12:30am till 2:30am and then again for an hour from 7 o clock in the morning, they complained.

Given the increased shortfall of electricity it was expected that spells of load-shedding would continue. In addition to the ever-increasing load-shedding hours, residents of various areas experienced prolonged power failures due to line faults and tripping in the fragile system of electricity transmission and distribution being commissioned by the KESC.

Tariff increase

Enraged by the huge and sudden increase in power tariff, small traders have decided to withhold payment of electricity dues and stage a series of protest demonstrations in various parts of the city from Tuesday.

According to a media release, President of the All-Pakistan Organization of Small Traders and Cottage Industries Mahmood Hamid announced that traders would stage a protest demonstration at Nazimabad Chowrangi on Tuesday. They would assemble at the Liberty Chowk on Tariq Road on Wednesday and at Bolton Market on Friday to register their protest over the increase in power tariff.

Pointing out that the latest tariff hike would put small traders out of business, Mr Hamid appealed to the president and the prime minister, the national assembly speaker and the chief minister to take its immediate notice and review the decision.

He resented the KESC tariff move saying that the hike was a death blow for traders as it would perish a vast majority of them, who already had suffered heavy losses due to frequent and prolonged outages. He also criticized the government for allowing the tariff hike instead of forcing the utility to improve generation and cut down line losses.