Electricity supply in many parts of the country continued to play hide-and-seek on Friday testing the nerves of people on the on the fourth consecutive day of Ramadan.
In Karachi, angry mobs burnt tires, blocking Pakistan Highway. Last week, the Karachi Electric supply Company (KESC) said the outages would be reduced to four hours but since then the Karachiites have been facing outages every two hours.
There is no respite despite the fact that the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP) has resumed 80 megawatts of electricity supply to the KESC. The KESC administration says only 15% of the residential areas of Karachi are being subjected to outages during Iftar time, citing some technical problems in two units of Bin Qasim Power Plant.
Complaints about power outages during Sehri time have been reported in areas including Gulshan-e-Iqbal, SITE, Baldia Town, northern parts of Karachi, New Karachi and others.
Meanwhile, angry mobs in Jacobabad ransacked on Friday a local power grid station and roughed up the security guard deployed there. Police arrested four agitators.
In Malakand division, power cuts exceeding 18 hours a day have been keeping the people on the tenterhooks. The plight of the people living in the rural areas is worse where people go without electricity at night. The worst hit areas including Agra, Kot, Heroshah, Palai, Thana, Batkhela, Totakan, Sakhakot and Dargai. People say outages have made there lives miserable. They lament that when they have electricity, they can’t use most of the appliances because of the low voltages. The situation has led to an acute water shortage. Sources say there are three hydropower houses in Dargai, Malakand generating around 100MW of electricity and the total consumption in Malakand is less than 6 MW. The opposition parties including PTI, PLM-N, JUI-F, JI and PPP-S are mulling a protest campaign against the massive outages. On Friday, angry residents staged a big demonstration in Thana, the home town of MNA Lal Muhammad Khan of PPP. The protestors chanted slogans against the government and the PESCO authorities. A delegation of residents also met Malakand DCO Syed Abdul-Jabar to complain about the problem.
The situation got worse in Sialkot where power outages exceeded 21 hours on Friday. The residents faced great difficulties especially during Sehari and Iftaar times and performed their religious obligations such as Taraavi and Juma prayers amid muggy conditions. The power cuts also caused acute water shortage too.
In Daska , the GEPCO officials said that the power supply remained suspended for seven consecutive hours (from 02:00 a.m. to 09:00 a.m.) on Friday. They cited ‘a big technical fault’ at Sohawa-Daska Grid Station as the reason.
Meanwhile, prolonged and unscheduled outages hit hard Pind Dadan Khan as well. The residents of Pind Dadan Khan and its surrounding areas faced massive blackouts. They complained that the outages in hot and muggy weather have made their lives miserable. The demanded that the government should improve the power supply system on priority basis.
