KARACHI, May 15 Enraged by increasing spells of load-shedding, which was carried out for at least eight hours in various areas of the metropolis on Friday, citizens demanded that the chief justice of Pakistan take suo motu notice of the failure of the Abaraj-led management of the KESC's handling of the power supply situation.

The demand was made during a protest by traders and members of the general public in Liaquatabad after Friday prayers, with a growing water shortage due to the power outages adding to citizens' woes.

“The message is clear,” the protestors said. “We must stack a substantial quantity of candles and lanterns, because the foreign KESC management seems to be bent upon sending us back to the dark ages.”

On a day when the mercury soared to 38 degrees Celsius with 58 per cent humidity, at least six spells of outages were experienced by sunset as the Karachi Electric Supply Company resorted to load-shedding to the tune of 550 megawatts, despite getting almost 550 megawatts from the Water and Power Development Authority. Demand on Friday swelled to 2,350MW.

The KESC's spokesperson claimed the load-shedding was only to the tune of 300MW and that there was no tripping of feeders.

Insiders, however, confirmed that serious tripping of feeders occurred and the relevant staff failed to rectify the faults. Many areas remained closed for more than six hours in this heat due to the outages.

According to sources, while Unit I of the Bin Qasim power station remained closed, Unit II was churning out 180MW. Unit III was generating only 80MW, while Unit IV was producing 150MW. Units V and VI were each generating 200 MW. As such, Bin Qasim was only generating 810MW.

Only one unit of the Korangi Thermal Power Station was functional on Friday. Procurement from IPPs was much below both their capacity and KESC's needs. According to officials, there was a shortfall of 1,100MW in meeting demand.

The Abaraj-led management was also accused of “ruining the economy of the country by subjecting the economic hub to long hours of outages”.

Mahmood Hamid of the small traders and market association warned that if the government failed to act swiftly against the utility's management, they would stop paying bills and stage sit-ins outside the Governor and Chief Minister's Houses.

General Secretary of the Peoples Workers Union of the KESC also expressed concern over the power situation and maintained that the issue “that affected 20 million people should lead to suo motu action by the CJP”.

Analysts say that while the new management of the KESC is bogged down in the circular debt issue, it has blatantly disobeyed the decision of the Economic Coordination Committee on time-bound power purchase agreement and on taking urgent steps for enhancing its own generation capacity.

The KESC is not willing to increase its own thermal generation because the management is trying to save money by not investing the promised amount for the development and day-to-day running of the company, they added.

Meanwhile, KESC consumers are set to face yet another hike in tariffs, with no end to power outages in sight. The management of the KESC has curtailed its own generation from the Bin Qasim plant to save on fuel costs, despite the government's strict directives to the contrary.

Besides continuous spells of load shedding, residents in Malir, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Gulshan-i-Jamal, Federal B Area, Nazimabad, Saddar, and other areas have been experiencing power breakdowns of prolonged duration due to tripping in power supply systems. In several other areas the KESC has failed to maintain normalised three-phase power supply.

Speaking to Dawn, Chaudhry Aziz from C-1 Area Cantonment Bazaar, Malir Cantt said that as of 7.30pm on Friday, his area had been without electricity for 20 hours.

He said that numerous attempts to contact the local and centralised complaint centre of the KESC for lodging a complaint did not bear any fruit.

He said that there is no justification for raising electricity tariffs and sending inflated power bills when there is no control of unabated load-shedding.