08:56 22/06/2015
Karachi - An intense heat wave killed more than 120 people over
the weekend in Pakistan's southern city of Karachi, officials said on
Monday, as the electricity grid crashed during the first days of the
Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The outages hit large portions of
Pakistan's financial heart and home to 20 million people, where
residents lit bonfires in protest.
"Hundreds of patients suffering
from the heat wave are being treated at government hospitals," Saeed
Mangnejo, health secretary for the province of Sindh, told Reuters.
Temperature
soared to 44 degrees Celsius on Saturday and hovered at 43 degrees
Celsius (109 Fahrenheit) on Sunday, coinciding with a surge of demand
for power as families observed Ramadan, when Muslims fast during
daylight hours.
Both the
federal government and K-Electric, the private company that supplies
Karachi with power, had promised there would be no outages during the
time when families gathered to break their fast at sunset.
Officials
from K-Electric were not immediately available for comment on the scale
or cause of the outages, which left many families without water,
air-conditioning, fans and light.
One of the Karachi's biggest
hospitals, the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, reported 85 deaths
from heat stroke and dehydration.
Thirty-five patients died from
heat stroke in other hospitals, doctors said. Two more died from
heat-related complications, Mangnejo said.
Corruption and
mismanagement mean Pakistan usually suffers eight hours of daily power
cuts even in its wealthy urban areas. Those in poorer areas are hit even
harder.
The cash-strapped government sells power for less than
the cost of production, but its late payments to suppliers cause a
chronic shortage.
Many wealthy or influential families and factory
owners exacerbate the problem by refusing to pay their bills or cutting
deals with corrupt power officials.
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