Power failure : SHC issued notices to KESC, Nepra

It has been 10 days since the PMT burned down in Cattle Colony.

KARACHI:

The Sindh High Court has issued notices to the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) and the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) in a petition filed against their failure to restore electricity.

The residents of Jilani Muhalla, Yousuf Goth in Cattle Colony, filed the petition in which they claimed that the KESC has an indifferent attitude towards its customers and has been unable to restore electricity to the neighbourhood for the tenth consecutive day.

On Tuesday, a division bench of the Sindh High Court, comprising Chief Justice Mushir Alam and Justice Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi, issued notices to the two companies along with the deputy attorney general and the Sindh advocate general. Petitioner Muhammad Gulab Khan, a resident and a representative of the Human Rights Commission South Asia for Bin Qasim Town, said that a pole-mounted transformer burned down on April 25 due to a technical fault. The KESC was informed of the power shut-down and requested to restore the electricity, he said.

A written complaint was also filed after 24 hours and, Khan said, he was asked to submit the paid bill of the current month.

Complying with these requests, the petitioner claimed he not only submitted his own bill, but the bills of 60 other consumers from the neighbourhood.

However, KESC failed to fix the problem. Khan and his neighbours have nominated the CEO of KESC and Nepra as respondents.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 11^th, 2011.