PESHAWAR: Population of thousands of residents in Neighbourhood Council-44 have criticised the authorities for disconnecting their electricity supply feeder from city area and linking it to rural areas, due to which they are being subjected to hours-long and unscheduled load-shedding.
The main city areas falling in NC-44, including National Bank Colony, Karim Abad, Kohati Road, Mohalla Taj Muhammad Sadozai and several other adjacent areas, have been part of the power supply feeder of Kakshal for decades. However, the power supply feeder of these city areas was changed and linked to the Rahman Baba feeder that is connected to villages near Kohat Road where massive loadshedding in conducted due to power theft and line losses.
Discussing the issue, MPA of the area Samar Bilour said that she is also helpless against the ruling party PTI leaders in the area.
“Local PTI leaders have changed this feeder and linked our area to rural areas but this is injustice. In rural areas, there are 90% line losses but there is 90% recovery in our city area; then why is our area facing the same massive load-shedding being carried out in rural areas,” she added.
She claimed that she even approached Pesco authorities and some officials showed her text messages of the PTI leaders, asking them to continue linking the city areas to the feeder of rural areas.
“When I repeatedly asked them to give us our right and being city areas, restore for us a power feeder in the same city area, the officials told me ‘it doesn’t make a difference as load-shedding is everywhere nowadays’,” she claimed.
She said the Pesco officials were also afraid of the ruling party leaders as they cared about their jobs.
Local residents also said that MNA Shaukat Ali had changed the power supply feeder from city area to rural one, depriving the local population of power supply despite paying regular bills.
When contacted, Chief Engineer Pesco Aslam Nawaz Gandapur was heard saying ‘I don’t speak to someone I don’t know’, as he was perhaps speaking to someone while his phone was on but then the call was cut off suddenly. He also did not reply to the questions delivered on his WhatsApp number about why they had linked the city areas with over 90% recoveries to rural areas that have almost 90% losses.
Salman Khan, a resident of the area, SAID that thousands of the residents of the area were subjected to injustice and unscheduled load-shedding for the last one year, as if they were living in Badaber and other rural areas.
“Besides the unscheduled load-shedding that continues today, the Pesco authorities had stopped power supply for entire days since November 2021 to 31 March in the name of ‘permits’. When we would ask them why power supply is suspended from 8am till 4pm three days a week, they would tell us that they had got permits for certain necessary work, this is why power supply is suspended for all the day,” he added.
Some residents alleged that a CNG filling station, owned by MNA Shaukat Ali, is linked to the local city area’s feeder while its nearest areas have been shifted to the power system of the rural Peshawar. Calls were made to MNA Shaukat Ali to seek his comment on the issue. However, he did not comment, even after seeing the messages on his WhatsApp number.