Much like other parts of the country, prolonged and unscheduled power outages have made the lives of people miserable in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and adjoining tribal region. The students, preparing for intermediate-level examinations and higher, say they are the worst-hit by this load shedding. In tune with the frequent power breakdowns, the anti-outage protests have become a routine for the people living in Tank, Kohistan, Angor Ada and Mastuj in Chitral. Around 2,000 students on Thursday staged a demonstration in Swat.
They were decrying the fact that the power loadshedding, during the examinations, was affecting their studies. They criticized the provincial government for its failure to ensure sustained power supply. People living in urban areas decry the 2-3 hours outages after every two hours during the daytime, adding that at night, the outages spike to 6 hours. The people in rural areas are facing electricity outages of up to 20 hours; while in certain KP districts people only have a glimpse or two of power supply resumption.
On the hand, the opposition political parties are planning to exploit the situation. The workers from Jamaat-e-Islami, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam and Pakistan Muslim League-N are frequently seen staging protests against the loadshedding in all the 24 KP districts and seven tribal agencies.