KARACHI: Power breakdowns seem to have became very frequent in Karachi once the ‘city of lights’ once again, Karachi turned into dark ages. Sunday night
It is the fifth major failure in a row and K-Electric, the sole power utility of the city, is helpless against them.
“Electricity supply from the national grid to Karachi suffered a serious interruption. On top of sinking the city in darkness it also shut down all the plants in ailing Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM). This outage also poses a grave danger to PSM units other installations like water pumping station,”
Almost the whole city has been reported to have been struggling preparing the predawn Ramazan meals without any electricity as infrastructurally creaky K-Electric wants to make them remember ‘the darkest hour is just before the dawn.’
According to reports pouring in from various districts of the rolling blackouts hit Malir, Malir (Cantt) Cantonment, Shah Faisal Colony, Drigh Road, Gulistan-e-Jauhar, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, PIB Colony, Federal B Area, North Karachi Block N, New Karachi, Gulberg Town, Model Colony, Landhi, Korangi, Baldia Town, Musharraf Colony, Ittehad Town, Safoora Scheme 33, Surjani Town, etc.
Quaid-e-Azam International Airport is also not an exception and running on stand-by power.
Sources told the major part of the breakdown was contributed by a fault at the Gulshan-e-Iqbal grid station, while the rest was caused by the tripping of a high-tension transmission line, which caused at least ten grid stations to go down.
“The grid station tripped off line closing down near 70 feeders. We are doing our best to fix it,”
Dhabeji, Gharo, and Pipri water pumping stations, which need a steady power supply to function being the main turbines that pump millions of gallons of waters to Karachi, are also down.
Another report confirmed a water pipeline has broken at the Dhabeji water pumping station.
“The power outage increased water pressure on a water main because motors couldn’t pump water out and it burst.
Electricity restoration process rolled out at 9am however in some areas, electricity was restored at 11am as well. Kelectric Social media help center kept repeated copy pasting ” feeders tripped due to which the outage of power happened with no estimated time.
Government seems not serious to fix the K-Electric management which has failed to deliver, specially in the month of Ramadan and People couldn’t stop themselves swearing K-Electric.