Prolonged power outages sparked protests in multiple areas of the cityon Wednesday.People appeared to have lost their temper over outages lasting even up to24 hours in a few localities. Residents of Lines Area and Abyssinia Lines took to the streets toprotest massive load-shedding by the K-Electric.The protesters blocked Shahrah-e-Quaideen, but reopened one of itstracks after talks with police and Rangers officials. They ended the blockade after K-Electric officials assured them that no powerload management would be done at night. A similar demonstration was staged outside the KE office in Malir onTuesday, at which the protesters also complained about over-billing bythe power distribution company. The KE management maintained that the power cuts were caused by faultsand tripping in areas with power theft. The shortage of furnace oil and gas has also affected the company’spower generation capacity, they said.