Karachi hit by severe power, fuel shortage

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Karachi came to a stand-still and was plunged into darkness as the full impact of the recent petrol shortage hit the south of the country on Wednesday after wreaking havoc in the northern areas of the country a day earlier. Pakistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry Spending Committee Chairman Malik Khuda Bakhsh told Pakistan Today that 88 percent of the filling stations in Karachi had exhausted their supply, and no petrol was expected in the city for the next five days.
The Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) announced almost 10 hours of power outages in the city because of the fuel shortage. Though many parts of the city usually remain without power for hours at a time owing to the KESC’s tussles with its employees and subsequent closure of its offices, the company increased the duration of load shedding even further on account of the
lack of fuel.
Bakhsh said Pakistan State Oil (PSO)’s shipment would not be able to anchor at Port Qasim for the next five days because of a delay in announcing the letter of credit. He said the provincial capital had been facing acute fuel shortage for the last three days, and on Wednesday five of the major oil marketing companies were forced to shut down their filling stations after they exhausted their fuel stocks.
Many filling stations were closed down during the day and citizens were seen queuing up at filling stations of Total and BYCO by the evening, both of which together run five percent of the city’s filling stations.
Residents of the city stored fuel in bottles and containers as the situation was predicted to worsen further. Motorcycles run out of fuel were seen abandoned across the city’s most heavily-affected areas.
Bakhsh said that the fuel shortage had hit the entire country, which was why Karachi could not receive any support from alternative fuel sources and reserves. He said that the Attock Oil Refinery’s suction pump has been out of order for the last 15 days, causing fuel shortage from the Northern Areas to Lahore, whereas the Pakistan Oil Refinery had been closed down for annual maintenance and was expected to begin functioning in another 15 days. He said PARCO had also been closed for a long time because of mechanical faults, and it was expected to reopen after completion of annual maintenance. Bakhsh said that there would be no fuel supply across the country for the next five days.
The Petroleum Ministry had directed OGRA on Tuesday to issue show-cause notices to seven oil marketing companies for their failure to keep the required amount of petrol in store.

2 COMMENTS

  1. Let us face it, the existing government has completely failed in resolving the power crisis. The only way out are new elections. A new government should come which will be able to resolve these issues

  2. Cheap Electricity From Kalabagh Dam a need of Citizens of Karachi.
    Disease of Provincialism in Politicians of NWFP and Sindh is mainly responsible for power shortage mayhem and the resultant chaos in the society due to tormenting blackouts and long power outrages.
    Importance of Electricity Versus Wastage of Water for Feudals.
    Why opposition on generation of electricity by Kalabagh Dam in which no water is wasted but provide option of safe storage of water for future use. Electricity is the need of each and every minute and moment of human life, people can not tolerate outage of electricity for one hour while agriculture land can tolerate need of water even many weeks, but why importance to agriculture of few feudals and no importance to electricity which is the need of each and every citizens of Pakistan generally and Karachi specially, because life of all citizens of Karachi(city of lights and Industry) revolves around provision of cheap electricity.

    • Children weeps in the night due to high temperature and mosquitoes bite due to outage of electricity,
    • Students can not study in night due to outage of electricity.
    • Industry can not run without electricity.
    • Machinery can not run without electricity.
    • Surgeons can not operate without electricity.
    • A patient on life machine can not survive without electricity.
    • Even in agriculture we can not use Tubewell without electricity.
    • Fertilizer can not be manufactured without electricity.
    • Pesticide can not be manufactured without electricity.
    • Sugar Mills,Cotton Mills,Textiles Mills.Flour Mills,Rice Mills can not run without electricity.

    Above points clearly indicates that use of water for generation of electricity is 1000 times better than wastage of water on land or in sea for few feudals, because water wasted in land or sea is not recoverable but water use for generation of electricity in Kalabagh Dam will be available for use for agriculture and Industry as it was suitable before generation of electricity and there will be no wastage of water.

    Sindh,Balochistan and Frontier are against Kalabagh
    because as per Sindh LOGIC Thar Coal is better than Kalabagh as Kalabagh will emmit BLACK SMOKE and Thar Coal will emmit fresh air full of Oxygen.
    And as per Balouchistan Vision GAS and coal extracted from Balouchistan are one of the most clean source of energy and Kalabagh will pollute air and land resouces and people will drown in Kalabagh and no one is dying in the coal mines of Balochistan.
    And as per Frontier wisdom, Royalty of Tarballa is so important that Pakistan can be broken for that and three rivers of Punjab can be sold to India by General Ayoub belonging from frontier for Construction of Tarbella in Frontier but Kalabgh dam is not good looking as it is in Punjab.
    All provinces want Provincial autonomy but Punjab should open or close its canals , IIRIGATE ITS LAND AND construct Dams as per desire of other provinces and after asking from other provinces Because it is necessary for unity and prosperity of Pakistan as when there will be no agriculture,no electricity and no water then Pakistan will be more united and more prosperous.
    From all above points it is clear that NWFP and Sindh who are opposing the generation of electricity and preservation and safe storage of water in Kalabagh dam are criminals of humanity as well as of World and politicians of these provinces are mainly responsible for shortage of electricity in the country and cities.

    Written By:M.AKRAM KHAN NIAZ.
    Karachi,Pakistan

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