Ready, set, off : Rolling blackouts for up to nine hours in Karachi

Sukkur residents complain of long, unscheduled outages.

KARACHI/SUKKUR:

Charge your UPS, repair the generators - load-shedding hours have been increased to nine in the residential areas of Karachi and eight in the industrial zones.

The Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) has introduced a new schedule in the city.

Residential areas would have three cycles of three-hour load-shedding while industrial areas will suffer four cycles of two-hour outages.

Some areas that had not been included in the earlier cycles would also undergo a three-hour cut in their daily supply.

KESC media general manager Aminur Rehman said that it was decided in meetings at CM House and Governor House that the KESC will get 60,000 metric tons of additional furnace oil under a gas load management programme.

“If the Pakistan State Oil (PSO) does not ensure a supply of furnace oil at subsidised rates, the consumer electricity tariff would go up by Rs3 per unit,” Rehman warned. “In contrast to the government’s assurances that the Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) will supply 120 mmcfd during the annual maintenance of Bhit gas field, the company has just supplied 100 mmcfd.”

For its part, PSO has yet to start supplying furnace oil at subsidised rates because it said that it has not received an official notification from the federal government, KESC maintained. Failing to ensure the supply of up to 200 mmcfd is an open violation of court orders, it added.

It’s dark in Sukkur too

At exactly 2:30 am, all fans in Sukkur city slowed to a stop and all nightlights flickered off — for the third night in a row.

Residents have complained that if the Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) announces three hours of load-shedding, in Sukkur and its surrounding areas the three hours turn into six or eight. Sometimes it is maintenance and sometimes it is a breakdown.

Pepco officials have blamed increased load-shedding on a reduction in hydel generation (electricity generated through water). Electricity goes out for two to four hours in urban areas and for six to 10 in rural areas.

Now that the water level in the Tarbela Dam has gone down, the hours without electricity have gone up.

The media manager of the Sukkur Electric Power Company (Sepco) Chief Executive Abdul Sattar Memon blamed the load-shedding - especially that takes place late at night - on the regional control centre (RCC) in Jamshoro. The centre, which is controlled from Islamabad, shuts off power supply to the entire city at the same time.

Memon lamented the extended load-shedding hours in the night and explained that Sepco had no say in this because the Jamshoro centre was under Islamabad’s control.

Sepco officials have directed the grid station officers not to exceed power shutdowns by more than six hours in 24 hours. “But what can we do about the RCC officers who shut off the supply to the entire city?” asked Memon.

Meanwhile, officials at the control centre, Jamshoro refused to share any information.

Pepco spokesperson Mohammad Khalid told The Express Tribune that following a larger shortfall in power generation, urban areas will suffer four to six hours of load-shedding while rural areas are worse off at eight to 10 hours. When asked about the entire of Sukkur city being without light for hours past midnight, he said he had no idea about the situation.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 15^th,  2011.