Power outages: Protesters manhandle KESC repair team

Residents of Gulshan-e-Hadeed pelt KESC vehicles with stones, ransack its office and manhandle employees.

KARACHI:

The Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) was the target of worked up residents of Gulshan-e-Hadeed on Tuesday, as they protested against the prolonged unannounced power outages while pelting the company’s vehicles with stones, ransacking its office and manhandling its employees.

“We’ve been deprived of electricity for the last three days,” said a resident, Imran Sarwar. “Do they [KESC] expect that people will shower them with flowers?” According to Sarwar, the company had cut off the power because someone had stolen wires and damaged their transformers.

Resident Mehmood Akhtar said that two men from the company were unable to find the fault in the main cable even after 48 hours. “They failed to fix the fault even after digging out the roads.”

KESC condemned the violence against the utility’s repair teams in the area, saying that it delayed the work even more on the three affected feeders.

According to KESC spokesperson Adil Murtaza, the employees were not allowed to perform their duty. He added that the excavation work for repairing feeder No. 1 and 6 and the Madar-e-Millat feeder took more time than usual because of the raised level of the newly constructed roads in the area.

Murtaza claimed that the faults have been repaired and electricity was restored in the area. The residents, however, complained that the electricity was restored for a brief period and then cut off again.

Protests were also held outside the Sindh Assembly and at MA Jinnah Road, Lines Area, Nazimabad, Gulbahar, Rizvia Society, Liaquatabad, FB Area, Jamshed Quarters, Patel Para and other areas against prolonged outages.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 12^th, 2013.