June 17, 2003	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 16, 1424

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KOHAT, June 16: A nine-hour power breakdown hit the whole district and the adjoining tribal areas, causing water shortage and badly affecting the routine of the office-goers and the business community as the mercury shot up to 44 degree Celsius on Monday.

It was the longest power outage in the city areas during the last 10 days.

Last week, power supply was stopped to the city-I and city-II areas for long intervals in the night for consecutive three days, whereas Pesco WAS unable to manage the faults caused by fluctuations and the old gadgets, which have completed their life span a decade ago.

Two years back, the government had decided to replace the old wires, transformers and gadgets installed at the Rawalpindi grid station, but since then no practical steps had been taken to solve the problem.

According to a Pesco official, more than 60 per cent of the lines and transformers installed two decades ago were too weak to bear the increasing load, thus disrupting regular power supply.

The situation in the surrounding villages was even more worse and they remained without electricity for the whole night.

The grid staff, when asked about the problem on Monday, made a lame excuse that the fault developed at 6am was removed at 10am, but the technical staff had gone to attend a funeral which caused the delay in the restoration of electricity supply. The electricity supply was restored at 3.30pm.