About 10 days back Power Minister Naveed Qamar pleasantly surprised the nation by vowing to do away with load shedding, but his claim remains a dream for the consumers, who faced protracted spells of power closure on Thursday. While PEPCO has recommenced load shedding for the consumers, intriguingly, no announcement had been made by the authority beforehand and hence, it was a massive jolt for the people. Unlike the past when power was curtailed for one hour spells, this time people had to make do without electricity for two hours consecutively. The power was closed early in the morning for two hours causing inconvenience for the school going children and people also ended up being late for the offices. This wasn’t all, as electric supply for closed for two hours again in the noon, and another two hour spell followed in the evening. In many areas, the situation was even worse as power closure lasted for more than two hours. Every part of the city including Gulshan Ravi, Samanabad, Township, Wapda Town, Wahdat Road, Iqbal Town, Model Town, Garden Town, Muslim Town, Awan Town, Baghbanpura, Shalimar and Mustafabad had to bear the brunt of load shedding. According to Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO) officials these outages were made to bridge the gap between demand and supply, as at present the disparity is of 500MW.
