By Qaiser Khan Afridi
The frequent power breakdowns have fuelled protests, even at late night, resulting in the blockades of roads and disruption of traffic. Traffic signals and road/street lights also remain off, making hazardous roads more dangerous to travel. Dinner parties are often held in candlelight. And air conditioners and fans have been just left for only display purposes.
In different parts of Peshawar, other districts of Frontier and tribal areas, hundreds of thousands of people are going through miseries due to loadshedding as the mercury keeps on shooting up. “We are facing hours-long loadshedding in this scorching heat, thanks to the so-called “awami hakoomat”, Shafiq Khan, an employee of a private organization, complained while taking to The News Friday.
The emotionally-charged Shafiq, while toweling his sweat, asserted that those at the helm of affairs should either have mercy on the people by streamlining the system or lease out the country to a developed state to better the situation,” he said sarcastically. “The economy has gone into a tailspin, with inflation mounting while the poor law & order coupled with frequent loadshedding has made the people mentally ill,” Mohammad Zaheer, a schoolteacher lamented.
Fed up with the prolonged power breakdowns, people are turning to violent protests in both urban and rural areas of the province.The charged protestors Friday blocked the main Indus Highway for two-and-half hours near Peshawar for traffic. Long queues of vehicles were witnessed on the road in the scorching heat.
Interestingly, the demonstrators blocked the road at Zangali checkpoint, where policemen were standing as silent spectators and looking at the protesters helplessly. It was only after the passengers repeated requests that the villages opened the road for traffic but at the same time they warned the government and Pesco to stop loadshedding, otherwise they would again block the road.
Likewise, Peshawarites in several urban localities protested against hours-long power breakdowns in the hot summer and warned of staging more demos if the situation did not improve. The protestors held demonstrations in Gulbahar, Grand Trunk Road, Dilazak Road, Hashtnagri, Faisal Town, Garhi Qamardin, Dora Road and Zamir Gul Garhai, Ring Road, Sethi Town and chanted slogans against the federal and provincial governments for not taking any practical steps to decrease the duration of loadshedding.
The protesters blocked the GT Road at Hashtnagri and Gulbahar on Thursday evening and the blockade continued till midnight. They uprooted the grills from the median and placed it in the middle of the road. Tyres were burnt, blocking all the traffic. The motorists faced severe hardships, as they had to take long routes to reach their destinations.
While the protesters closed the busiest road, the staff of the Hashtnagri and Gulbahar Police Stations disappeared from the scene, and left the motorists in the lurch to face the wrath of the angry protesters.