Karachi blacked out over WAPDA’s unpaid bills

[HAIDER]

KARACHI, Pakistan, March 6 (AFP) - A row over huge unpaid bills sparked a massive power blackout in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi, that left most of its 12 million residents without electricity Thursday, officials said. The outage came after Pakistan's main power utility, the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) accused the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) supplying power to the southern port of refusing to settle debts of more than half a million dollars. The outage affected bazaars, businesses and homes in the normally bustling economic hub and caused huge traffic jams as signals went out of order, witnesses said. “KESC owes 34.8 billion rupees (548 million dollars) to us, which they have avoided paying for many months,” said Tahir Bisharat Cheema, the director general of WAPDA’s supply and management wing. He said the company only repaid 250 million rupees despite weekly reminders “to which they never replied.” ”We sent them a final reminder on Wednesday and informed them that we would stop supplying electricity if the longstanding dues were not paid,” Cheema told AFP. KESC said supplies were returning to about a third of the city later Thursday but accused the WAPDA of failing to warn it about the shutoff. “They suddenly stopped supplying 300 megawatts to Karachi at 8am and the power supply fell to virtually zero,” as the system tripped, KESC spokesman Sultan Hassan told AFP. “KESC staff are making efforts to restore electricity supply but it needs WAPDA supplies resumed first”, he said. (First Posted @ 11:15 PST, Updated @ 17:15 PST)
- DAWN - Latest Stories; March 06, 2008

 

[asaad-ul-islam]

i hope we have some protests for power outages against the new govt. soon.