Consumers protest highly inflated electricity bills

LAHORE:Consumers have castigated power utility over issuance of highly-inflated electricity bills.

Residents of different localities of the City staged a protest demonstration against inflated electricity bills on Wahdat Road here on Sunday. The protesters blocked the main road, burnt the electricity bills and demanded the government abolish all cruel taxes on the electricity bill.

Besides holding several demonstrations outside the offices of Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco), people belonging to different walks of life have expressed their anger on social media platforms. Hamza Sheikh, in his post on microblogging site stated that against last year's bill of Rs4,000 for month of July, it is cruel act of power utility that Rs24,000 bill has been issued in July. He claimed that Lesco ruthlessly restoring to disconnecting connection of customers who have not been able to pay bills.

Khadija Bibi was of the view that present government has made life miserable. Last year in August, power bill was around Rs10,000 and now it is more than Rs22,000. What will be left for the family after paying excessive amount of power bills, she posed. Ihsan Rana claimed that he received Rs12,830 electricity bill for using only 175 units. He commented that it was injustice to poor people by the government.

Meanwhile, power outages also continued to haunt masses. Power shortfall in Lesco area has exceeded by 600MW. Lesco's electricity demand currently is more than 4,900 MW against supply of 4,300 MW electricity. Resultantly, load-shedding of four to five hours is being observed in different areas.

On national level, the electricity shortfall has exceeded 5,000 megawatts, resulting in four-eight hours of power cuts daily. The shortfall of electricity in the country has reached at 5,200MW. The demand for electricity in the country stood at 26,100 MW and the production is 20,000MW.