January 17, 2003	Friday	Ziqa'ad 13, 1423

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MUZAFFARABAD, Jan 16: The frequent power outages in the AJK capital have subjected the residents to great deal of hardship for the past ten days, and there are reports that the problem may persist for more than a week.

According to an official at the main grid station in Muzaffarabad, which is under the control of the Water and Power Development Authority, the fault had occurred on Jan 7 in the “buchloz” of one of the three 20/26 MVA main transformers.

Since then, the Water and Power Development Authority had resorted to suspending power supply to the main city for several hours in the intervals throughout the day, creating anger and unrest among the people from all walks of life.

Particularly, in the evening, the sudden suspension and restoration of power supply was playing “hide and seek” with the consumers and had also reportedly cost several of them their precious electrical appliances.

On Sunday last, the AJK prime minister had expressed serious concern over the frequent power breakdowns and asked the Wapda to ensure smooth power supply to the AJK capital.

At a public meeting in Mirpur, the premier made it clear to the authority that it was its duty to remove the faults at the grid stations or at any feeder under its control.

The Wapda official, when contacted by Dawn, said: “We have been trying our best to remove the fault in the transformer, but so far it has re-emerged four times and if the same indication appears for the fifth time, the transformer will become completely useless.”

He said that the power breakdowns were inevitable “because we could not allow load on the transformer beyond 350 Amperes”.

“Otherwise, the city will plunge into darkness for a long time till the replacement of the worn out transformer,” he added.

The official said that the Wapda authorities had sent a new transformer for the grid station from Hittar (NWFP), but, unfortunately, the vehicle carrying the transformer had got stuck up some nine kilometres from here at the Abbottabad-Muzaffarabad road following the caving in of a wall of a small bridge on a nullah.

“It will take us at least seven days to install the new transformer after it is brought here,” the Wapda official said.

Meanwhile, a group of residents had called for a torchbearer rally on Friday evening to condemn the frequent power breakdowns due to “negligence and indifference” of Wapda authorities.