Urban areas experience 16, rural 20-hour outages

Power shortfall mounts to 7,000MW; heatwave continues in Sindh

ISLAMABAD: Unscheduled and excessive loadshedding is making life difficult for people as the electricity shortfall crossed 7,000MW mark on Friday.

With the mercury surging towards 40 degrees Celsius, the ghost of unannounced and unremitting loadshedding is haunting the people.  The urban areas continue to bear with loadshedding up to 16 hours a day whereas in rural areas it ranges from 18 to 20 hours, local media reported. Informed sources said the demand has crossed 18,935 megawatts of electricity against generation figure of less than 12,000MW.  Major dams are facing dead level situation, therefore, hydro-power generation is as low as 2,200MW.

Sources said that the maximum demand of electricity is 26,000MW in the country.

Government claims that after power production from Nandipur plant and better water level in dams, the situation would improve in a few days.

However, experts say national grid has the capacity to put up with 15,000MW and excess power would collapse the system.  Meanwhile, the Sindh province continued suffering from severe heat on Friday, forcing the majority of people to stay indoors. The Met Office Larkana recorded 51 degree Celsius as the maximum temperature, while temperature at Moen-Jo-Daro airport was 50 degree Celsius.  Many sunstroke patients were brought to government and private hospitals for treatment..