KARACHI: Pakistan’s largest city, along with parts of Sindh, remained paralysed by prolonged power cuts and waterlogging on Thursday, two days after heavy monsoon rains, as officials cautioned that the next phase of the monsoon could be even more destructive.
With several roads still inundated in rainwater, Karachi Traffic Police has said that the Clifton Underpass was open for traffic.
Underpasses other than the Clifton one are closed for traffic, the traffic police said, adding that the Korangi River and Causeway Road were also closed for general traffic.
Sindh Governor Kamran Khan Tessori, taking notice of the worsening outages, said he would meet the managing director of K-Electric, the only utility tasked with supplying electricity to Karachi.
Residents in areas including North Nazimabad, Gulistan-e-Jauhar, Defence View, Orangi Town, Lyari, Baldia Town, Liaquatabad, Surjani and the Korangi Industrial Area reported being without electricity for between 24 and 48 hours.
In some parts of the city, blackouts stretched beyond a day and a half, cutting off water supplies to households.
In Gulistan-e-Jauhar’s Block 8, residents staged a protest after going 32 hours without power, while in Block 2 electricity had been out since Tuesday. North Nazimabad residents reported blackouts lasting up to 45 hours.
Similar situation was reported from Hyderabad, where citizens said 90% of Latifabad and Qasimabad remained in darkness, with restoration delayed for over seven hours.
K-Electric Chief Executive Moonis Alvi said more than 500 feeders had tripped during the downpour, but insisted that 94% of supply had been restored by Wednesday evening.
The KE has said that electricity on only 100 feeders was cut off and power was being supplied to the city via 2,000 feeders out of the total 2,100.
Work to restore power to 100 feeders is underway, the utility provider added.
It said that accumulated water across many parts of the city had hampered the movement of vehicles, slowing the efforts of repair teams.
Governor Tessori, accompanied by MQM leader Dr Farooq Sattar, visited flood-hit areas late Wednesday and later told reporters that electricity shortages had become Karachi’s most pressing challenge.
He said that families in Surjani had been forced to spend the night on rooftops as rainwater inundated their homes, adding that food aid had already begun in the area.
He also called for urgent drainage of waterlogged localities.
Tessori said that Governor House’s complaint cell had received over 11,000 calls in a single day, most of them linked to outages, adding that similar centres would soon be set up in Hyderabad and Mirpurkhas.
“This is not the moment to pin everything on climate change,” he said. “Once this crisis passes, we must address the root causes of these failures.”
He added that the K-Electric managing director had been summoned for a briefing today.
