LAHORE, June 22: Lahorites on Wednesday braved another day of intense heat made worse by frequent power failures and fluctuations, with Lesco citing the usual excuse of system overloading.

Agonized over frequent outages for most of the day, citizens in different parts of the city refused to believe what they were told by Lesco when they approached the utility.

“The company is in the habit of telling what suits its image and so-called efficiency criteria,” said a resident of Samanabad.

“The Lesco people are admitting to only 500 odd power trippings in the entire area serviced by the company, which covers districts of Sheikhupura, Kasur and Okara as well. Whereas, the frequency of trippings in Lahore alone should not make the figure less than three times of what Lesco is ready to own up to. The entire city has been held hostage by power failures and severe fluctuations, he said.

“Lesco has its distribution problems made worse by a massive rise in power consumption, which went up by over 500MW as the hot weather set in,” said an official of the Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

“But it should also realize that the increase did not come overnight. It has been a steady rise because of the banks offering liberal consumer finance during the last three years. This policy has made the availability of electrical appliances so easy that many new consumers have bought air-conditioners,” he said.

The Lesco management had gone on the record to take credit of a rise in its income due to increase in the sale of electrical appliances. Now, suddenly, it has started using the same argument as a justification for its failure. It may help the Lesco management to deflect the blame for a short while, but it will not make the problem go away.

On Tuesday, a Lesco official, when contacted by Dawn, reluctantly admitted to having had 580 minor outages lasting less than 20 minutes and 23 major power breakdowns.

“The Lesco people know that their distribution system is on the verge of a collapse, and even a minor increase in load can make the system come crashing down, at least in some parts of the city. The company should try to find ways of dealing with the problem instead of making excuses to escape the blame,” advised the IEEE official. “For three years the company has been telling us that it is taking the necessary steps to alleviate the problem of power breakdowns,” says another consumer.

Lesco first spoke of covering grid stations with nets to avoid kites falling on them, then it claimed to be insulating wires to avoid exposure to metal wires used as kite strings, and of late it was claiming to be replacing weak wires to avoid distribution losses. But, nothing seems to be working, and now people are given the excuse of a load growth.

“Lesco must try to chalk out a comprehensive upgradation plan for distribution and execute it on a war footing. It should also honestly share its genuine problems with consumers and take them into confidence as to the timeframe required to solve them,” advised the official from the IEEE.

Doing so would lessen people’s frustration as well as the headache caused to the company in the form of the barrage of complaints against its performance.

The present policy of passing on the blame and making up clumsy excuses has already entered the stage of diminishing returns, as people’s patience is fast running out.