Slight rain leaves Hyderabad without power

The monsoon showers poured on Hyderabad and surrounding districts on Friday, turning the hot and humid weather pleasant. However, Hyderabad Electric Supply Company clung to its decades-old practice of thrusting a massive and long-lasting power breakdown on the citizens. The Pakistan Meteorological Department recorded 18 millimetre rain in Hyderabad from morning till 6pm. But the long outage suggested as if a cloudburst had struck the city.

A light rain of 18mm exposed the preparedness level of the civic agencies for the deluge which is yet to come in Hyderabad and rest of Sindh. Sewers were overflowing, roads were inundated at many points and there was prolonged power breakdown in the second largest city of the province after a mild downpour. The HESCO's spokesman Sadiq Kubar claimed only 56 out of more than 200 electric feeders of 11kv in the city have been put under suspension. However, complaints pouring in from different and distant parts of the city negated the official claim. He said that a total of 195 feeders have been shut down in the entire HESCO region, which stretches to Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas and Nawabshah divisions, because of the rain.

Kubar informed that a tree fell over the transmission line in Fort feeder. The light rain created rainwater and sewage mixed poodles in the localities with poor drainage and road infrastructure in Hyderabad.