Despite an improvement in electricity production and a decrease in the power shortfall, load shedding continued to haunt citizens on Saturday and people had to suffer eight to 14 hours of outages.
Electricity was suspended for one hour after every two hours and in many areas, unscheduled load shedding was also witnessed. Almost all major areas of the city including Gulberg, Shadman, Faisal Town, Model Town, Garden Town, Township, Allama Iqbal Town, Rehmanpura, Muslim Town, Cantt, the Walled City and others witnessed repeated outages.
Citizens said that there has been no relief in load shedding and they could not even perform routine duties. Software engineer Shahzad Zafar said that he had to update various websites but due to continuous load shedding, his business is suffering. “I have installed a UPS but due to continuous and long hours of power suspension, the UPS is not working and I could not update the websites. My clients are demanding their money back and business is near collapse,” he lamented.
Similarly, traders said that customers have depleted due to load shedding. “People are least interested in shopping in hot weather and seldom any customer stays during power closures due to which our business is suffering badly,” Liberty Market trader Babar Ali Bhatti said. On Friday, power generation remained 12,259MW and demand 16,140MW creating a shortfall of 3,881MW. There has been an improvement in hydel generation, which remained 4,181MW, thermal 1,806MW and Independent Power Producers (IPP) produced 6,210MW.
According to Pakistan Electric Power Company (PEPCO) sources, there has been no significant improvement in thermal power production, as gas supplies remained low. They said that if gas and oil supplies improved, load shedding could decrease.
