Imtiaz Shaikh, Sindh Energy Minister, has accused K-Electric for the city's power outages, claiming that load-shedding has made life difficult for Karachi residents.
Sindh's energy minister stated that the people of Sindh could no longer tolerate regular, hour-long power outages. He said that in a single day, the people of Sindh have to undergo up to 18 hours of load shedding.
On Friday, he mentioned this while participating via
video-link in a meeting hosted by the Chairman of the National Electric Power
Regulatory Authority (Nepra) and attended by the CEOs of several power
distribution firms as well as the general public.
He asserted that no electric supply feeder in Sindh could
now be described as load-shedding-free. He went on to say that he had been
receiving calls from electricity customers in Malir, Lyari, Gulshan-e-Iqbal,
Nazimabad, and Defence on a daily basis, complaining about protracted power
outages.
He was also dissatisfied with the Hyderabad Electric Supply
Company (Hesco) and Sukkur Electric Power Company's performance (Sepco).
He said that Johi, a town in Sindh's Jamshoro district, has
been waiting for repairs to its malfunctioning transformers and downed power
lines since 2010.
He said that power customers had to deal with such extensive
power outages on a daily basis, despite the fact that they queued up at banks
to pay their electricity bills on a regular basis.
He said that Nepra owed it to the power distribution firms
to probe them about their inability to maintain an uninterrupted power supply.
According to the energy minister, employees of power
distribution corporations were complicit in power theft since electricity could
not be taken without their knowledge.
He stated that electricity distribution businesses have to
put in a lot of effort to improve their performance. He stated that the Sindh
government could not abandon the province's people to the KE, SEPCO, and HESCO.