Long hours of power outages perturb Pindiites

Rawalpindi

Islamabad Electric Supply Company (Iesco) on Saturday wrecked the nerves of people by suspending power supply for about 9 long hours in several localities of Rawalpindi.

The issue of power breakdown started at 8:00 a.m. which continued till 5:00 p.m. The areas which were affected included Akram Colony, Sana Colony, Aslam Shaheed Road, Adiala, Tulsa Road, Dhoke Juma, Dheri Hassanabad, Lalazar, Ghousia Chowk, Kalma Chowk, Dhoke Syedan etc.

Due to long hours of power breakdown, the people passed the entire day in sweltering heat and perspired badly cursing the Iesco authorities for failing to rectify the situation.

Mohammad Abrar of Lalazar said that instead of seeing improvement in power supply, the situation is worsening with the passage of time. The long hours of power breakdowns and frequent power outages reminds the era of PPP regime which had made the lives of people miserable to live through long hours of loadshedding of electricity.

Bilal Shah, a resident of Sherzaman Colony termed power breakdowns in addition to daily load shedding a failure of the concerned authorities in the government which otherwise had made tall claims of making improvement in power supply situation by launching mega projects. If the government is working on power projects then why the hours of load shedding is not being curtailed every year, he questioned.

Sohail Aman while criticizing the Iesco and other power related bodies said that though consumers are suffering badly due to power breakdowns and electricity load shedding however, the concerned authorities in the government particularly, the minister and the Iesco CEO do not take any notice of the sufferings of the people to resolve the issue. Instead the government is bent upon increasing the charges of power tariff People through deprived of smooth and uninterrupted supply of electricity however, they are forced to pay huge and highly inflated electricity bills every month.

One of the senior official of Iesco, Khalil Ashraf while admitting the fact of long hours of power suspension was done on Saturday said that the staff was busy in replacing transformers in Tulsa Chowk because of which the problem occurred. He also agreed that people were denied of smooth supply of electricity.