KARACHI: Police on Tuesday baton-charged and tear-gassed hundreds of residents who were protesting prolonged outages in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi, amid sweltering weather.
Residents of Lyari Town gathered on Mauripur Road, which connects the city to the port and is plied by thousands of goods vehicles every day, and blocked it for traffic by burning tires Monday afternoon.
Clashes erupted between police and demonstrators on Tuesday, after multiple rounds of talks failed to defuse the protest on the key route.
The demonstrators demanded K-Electric, the sole power distributor in the city of 150 million, end unannounced power cuts in their locality.
“There have been 14- to 16-hour outages in different areas of Lyari and people of have been staging a sit-in against it on Mauripur Road since Monday afternoon,” said Junaid Khan, a resident of Lyari Town.
“We demand K-Electric end this load-shedding.”
Asif Bughio, a senior superintendent of police (SSP), said they were in talks with the protesters for an end to the sit-in.
Meanwhile, residents also blocked Abul Hasan Isphahani Road for traffic in protest against prolonged outages.
The K-Electric did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Karachi, the industrial and commercial hub of the country, has witnessed unannounced, prolonged power cuts and frequent breakdowns in recent weeks. The situation has disrupted production at thousands of industrial units across the city.
To conserve energy, the government in Sindh province, which Karachi is a capital of, on June 18 announced it was reducing business hours from 11pm to 9pm for at least a month.
Pakistan has been witnessing a power shortfall of 4,600 megawatts, with supply at 21,000 megawatts and demand at 25,600 megawatts, the country’s information ministry said on June 7.
Since April, the South Asian country has been hit by intense heatwaves, which touched highs of 47 degrees Celsius (116.6 Fahrenheit).
Last week, pre-monsoon rains brought some respite to people across the country, but day temperatures have again started soaring above 40 degrees Celsius.
