Increased power cuts

Letter July 06, 2020
The grim annual ritual of prolonged periods of power cuts - announced and unannounced - make lives of citizens miserable in Karachi

As blazing heat and high humidity continues to torment Karachi in the summers, the grim annual ritual of load shedding and prolonged periods of power cuts both announced and unannounced make lives of citizens miserable in the busy metropolitan city.

The city’s sole electricity supplier claims that the shortage of furnace oil and gas has led to additional power cuts while the power division sector blames the insufficient transmission and distribution capacity of KE for the worsening of the crisis. Meanwhile, with the Sindh government pointing fingers at the federal government for short fuel supplies, the brunt of this blame game falls on the residents whose despairs in this blazing heat reach the point where it becomes difficult to survive. Due to partial lockdowns, citizens are studying and working from home and those that have been tested positive are self-isolating. While load-shedding is no new story, with the excruciating Covid-19 experience this year, the power cuts are an additional burden on the people. This problem, therefore, needs to be addressed without any delay.

Instead of pointing fingers, all concerned stakeholders need to work in unison to resolve the crisis to either the bare minimum or total elimination. Doing so can help alleviate people’s misery in these testing times.

Hadia Mukhtar

Karachi

Published in The Express Tribune, July 2, 2020.

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