Rain brings misery of power outages

Utility says shutdown meant to prevent electrocution mishaps during rain

HYDERABAD:

The heavens opened over Hyderabad in the wee hours of Sunday but the pleasant weather as always entailed the misery of long lasting power outages as blackout immediately followed the downpour.

The Pakistan Meteorological Department recorded 15 millimeter rain by 10am on Sunday. The heavy downpour started around 1.45 am and lasted for 15 to 20 minutes. However, drizzle continued throughout the day sporadically.

Another spell of heavy downpour started at around 6pm in evening. The low-lying areas and the roads with depression and potholes were filled with over ankle-deep muddy water, which also mixed with sewage on many roads, streets and neighbourhoods.

The Mayor Kashif Ali Shoro visited Tulsidas, Baba Haider Shah, Mustafa Park and Affandi town pumping stations of the drainage network to ensure early disposal of rainwater. "It has rained a lot," said the mayor while talking to the media.

Shoro, with his clothes completely soaked in rainwater and water droplets falling from his hairs over his face, blamed Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (HESCO) for hampering their efforts to drain the rainwater. According to him, almost all the electric feeders of the company which power the pumping stations of Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) are off for several hours.

He told that he spoke to the company's chief executive officer Muzaffar Ali Abbassi three to four times since Sunday morning but every time he only received assurances. During their last conversation in the evening, the mayor was assured that all feeders powering the pumping stations will be restored in 30 minutes. However, only a couple of feeders out of 128 were restored.

The mayor said the pumping stations of WASA are functioning with the help of the electric generators albeit with less than half of their capacity. "There are up to five heavy motors at the pumping stations like Tulsidas. With the generators WASA can run only two of these motors," he explained.

The spokesman of Hyderabad Development Authority (HDA), parent organisation of WASA, claimed that up to 12 hours of outages are being carried out by the company. He referred to a recent disclosure of the company in which it was revealed that HESCO was receiving around half of its required electricity from the national grid.

He told that WASA has submitted two recommendations to the government, demanding either express feeders for its pumping stations and filtration plants or allocation of funds for purchase of diesel to power its generators. He said owing to the prevailing financial constraints of the agency, they cannot run their generators of expensive fuel for such long hours.

Meanwhile, HESCO's spokesman Sadiq Kubar said 45 feeders in Hyderabad and 141 in other districts in the company's jurisdiction have been shut down due to the safety reasons during the rain. According to him, the electric supply will be restored once the field staff of the company gave clearance after the rain stopped.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 24^th, 2023.