Whether power supplied or not?: Consumers have to make regular payment of bills

Consumers of K-Electric have no choice but to make regular payment of their electricity bills whether they get uninterrupted power supply or not. According to sources, such a situation had arisen as the power utility has neither spent on improving its infrastructure nor on increasing the power generation.
Several residential consumers claimed power outages have increased up to 14 hours. Aslam, a resident of Gulshan-e-Zahoor said, "Earlier load-shedding was restricted to eight hours. But it is for last two weeks that were being subjected to 15 hours loadshedding." On the one hand, consumers have been experiencing loadshedding of longer duration and, on the other hand, they have been constantly suffering financial losses in the wake of sudden fluctuation in voltages.
Such losses are suffered by the consumers as the power utility has reportedly installed substandard silver wire, instead of using pure copper wires, sources confided to this correspondent. PECHS, Gizri, Lines Area, Sindhi Muslim Co-operative Housing Society, North Nazimabad, Surjani Town, Orangi Town, New Karachi, Garden, Sadar Town, North Karachi, Malir Town, Gulshan-e- Iqbal, Sohrab Goth, Sadar and Lyari Town were are some of the worst affected localities.
Meanwhile, K-Electric claimed that a 220 KV underground transmission line, passing through Qayyumabad, got affected when a nearby pipeline burst and water leaked into it, causing further problems for the entire electricity transmission network. The affected grids were restored from alternative sources, but in order to avoid overloading on the alternative circuit, load-shedding to the tune of 1.5 hours was carried out on low-loss feeders which were previously exempted from any loadshedding.
However, with a view to rectifying the fault at the earliest, shutdown of an alternate circuit was arranged on Thursday afternoon so that the repairing work could be completed as fast as possible. Due to this three-hour shutdown, low-loss feeders were again subjected to loadshedding on Thursday, the K-Electric explained.