KARACHI - The Karachi Electric Supply Company continued to make the lives of its consumers miserable even in the holy month of Ramzan. The citizens in the metropolis are facing prolonged power outages throughout the day, and there is no respite even in Sehri and Iftar timings. The city continued to remain in grip of power shutdowns, which lasted for five to six hours. Whereas the company claimed that there is no loadsheding in the city, saying the power outages are due to technical faults. It is worth noting that the KESC had announced several times before Ramzan that no loadsheding would be carried out during the Holy month in order to facilitate the worshipers. According to the sources, the demand of electricity in the metropolis has dropped and now it is around 2,000 to 2200 MW, but still the company has failed to provide uninterrupted power supply to its consumers and is supplying just 1,880 MW. Sources said that the KESC received 2,000 million tons of furnace oil on Friday for the power generation, yet it is working below capacity. Sources said that the liabilities of Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) have now mounted to more than Rs 70 billion, out of which around Rs 40 billion is to be paid to WAPDA. On the other hand, Rs 60 billion is the amount to be paid by the company to the banks for the rental power plants, sources in the company informed. The company has outstanding liabilities towards the Independent Power Producers (IPPs), due to which these IPPs either stopped their generation or operate below the capacity. The Bin Qasim Power Plant has been supplying 690 MW of electricity, despite the generation capacity of 1,100 MW as its unit No 6 is closed down for maintenance. While, unit 1 and unit 2 were generating 175 MW each, and unit 3 and unit 4 were generating 70 MW each. Unit 5 of the plant was supplying 200 MW to the system. Meanwhile, during a press briefing, the Revenue Protection Department of KESC has announced that it has unearthed 40 cases of electricity theft in the small industries in Old Golimar, Orangi Town and Baldia. This was announced by Zahir H Rizvi, Director Distribution, who was accompanied by A Hafeez Memon and Engineer Mehboob Alam, DGMs of Revenue Protection Department (RPD). He said that the RPD had inducted 40 teams for checking electricity theft all over the City and they had been busy in detecting various illegal means of the crime, which included metre tempering and unauthorized cable links. He said that the teams had adopted legal procedure of testing metres in front of the consumers and located unauthorized cables connected to the main supply. Legal notices had been served to the persons involved. He said that two units had temporarily developed constraints which had caused over 250 MWs deficit of power supply. Maintenance of a unit 6 and a unit at Korangi Thermal Power Station was in progress and both the units were expected to resume generation by Saturday night.