Anti-KE strike: Cable TV, internet users in Karachi, Hyderabad and Sukkur experience temporary outage
Cable operators announce three-hour disruption between 7pm and 10pm to protest KE "constantly" cutting down their wires
July 14, 2020
Pakistan Cable Operators Association Chairperson Khalid Arain on Tuesday said the association will continue its strike against K-Electric in Karachi and the protest will moreover be extended to Hyderabad and Sukkur.
As a result, cable TV services and internet remained suspended for three hours today, between 7pm and 10pm in all three cities.
A day earlier, to protest against what was termed as the power utility's "highhandedness", services were shut down for two hours between 7pm and 9pm.
"We condemn the cutting down of our wires by K-Electric staff," said the association's general secretary, Chaudhry Tahir, adding that the staff is "constantly" cutting down their cables.
Tahir also accused KE of "blatantly lying" to people. He said that the power utility had been approached to grant the service providers a three-year period to complete the laying down of cables underground.
Cable operators shut down services
Yesterday, the cable operators association had shut down cable TV and internet services in a symbolic strike, earning the ire of many a consumer.
The consumers expressed horror at two private companies engaging in a protest war despite billing "consumers on a monthly basis regardless of quality or availability of internet or TV".
Arain had warned that if the power utility does not desist from cutting down the cable TV and internet wires and does not give the operators time to lay down an underground network "we will hold a two-hour symbolic strike daily and shut down the service across all of Pakistan".
K-Electric had said wires were cut down because it is "illegal and unsafe" to use electricity poles for a distribution network of cable TV and internet services.
