KARACHI: Intense heatwave in Karachi has exposed vulnerabilities in K-Electric’s power supply system.

Widespread outages have disrupted daily life, leaving residents without electricity for up to sixteen hours in some areas. City’s electrical infrastructure, compromised by corroded and outdated PMTs and feeders, has struggled under pressure. Situation has been exacerbated by copper thieves damaging system, leading to repeated overloads and tripping. Unannounced load-shedding, purportedly for fault correction and repair, has further strained lives of citizens. Most affected are sick, elderly, children and women, whose well-being has been jeopardised by K-Electric’s apparent indifference during this heatwave. Businesses and industries are also suffering, with hourly load-shedding causing daily financial losses amounting to millions of rupees.

Despite crisis, K-Electric claims that seventy percent of city remains free from load shedding, statement that many residents find hard to believe given their prolonged power outages. Power Company’s stance that supply depends on recovery and losses has not alleviated frustrations of Karachi’s 30 million citizens. On other hand, citizens staged several demonstration in protest over prolonged loadshedding and inflated power bills. They demanded Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government to cancel licence of KE as power utility had “Miserably failed” to serve people of metropolis. They said that KE was defying all protocols set by National Electric Power Regulatory Authority and consumers to challenge renewal of company’s licence before Supreme Court.