Pesco criticised for excessive power loadshedding

MANSEHRA: People from different walks of life on Wednesday denounced the Peshawar Electricity Supply Company (Pesco) for the prolonged and unscheduled loadshedding in the city and its suburbs.

“The Pesco has been suspending power supply for a daylong period every alternative day, adversely affecting the business and other activities in the city and its suburbs,” Fayyaz Solaria, the chairman of the traders body, told reporters.

He said besides routine loadshedding the Pesco suspends electricity supply to domestic and commercial consumers from 7 am to 5 pm on alternative days in the garb of trimming tree branches alongside its power supply lines at arteries in the city and its suburbs.

“Our businesses, which have already been reeling because of the country’s highest-ever inflation are plunging into a deep crisis owing to the ongoing prolonged power outages,” Solaria lamented.

The trader leader said they would come onto the streets and block the main artery to traffic if the ongoing prolonged load-shedding was not ended.A local resident, Mohammad Arif Rajpot said that Pesco sends heavy utility bills every month despite suspending electricity supply for almost an entire day.

“The electricity supply at Channia, upper Channia and its adjoining city’s localities remained suspended for almost the entire day on the pretext of maintenance of supply lines, and trimming of tree’s branches at Karakoram Highway and the Abbottabad Road but in fact no such an activity could take place anywhere,” he alleged.

Another local Ajmal Khan said that the government should take notice of such prolonged and unscheduled loadshedding being carried out in the form of maintenance.“In such a situation raised after the suspension of electricity supply, locals cannot make functional hand pumps and wells machines and remain without potable water the entire day,” he said.