LAHORE, May 2: With doubling of loadshedding schedule and temperatures rising to baking proportions, the Lahorites are in for some tough time.

On Wednesday, it was not only power outages but also low voltage and electricity fluctuations which took the heaviest toll by rendering most of the electrical gadgets useless.

There were reports of even desert coolers running below their capacity for want of full power supplies. To make the matter even worse, there were complaints of discrimination in different areas when it came to spreading the load of power shedding evenly on all parts of the city. Such complaints were more frequent in Township.

After humans, the hardest hit was water supply in some areas. The loadshedding schedule in these areas coincided with running of tubewells of the Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA).

“In my area, a gross discrimination in loadshedding is going on within the same street,” says Muhammad Afzal of Township. Despite both sides of the street being fed from different feeders, one was suffering four to five outages in 24 hours, while the other only one, he said and added that kind of discrimination in this sweltering heat enraged the tempers, and should be avoided at all costs. “There have already been sporadic protests in some parts of the city. If such policies are allowed to continue, bigger social chaos cannot be ruled out.”

Muhammad Shahbaz of Gulberg thinks that dealing with outages is tough, but low voltage and fluctuations are much more psychologically taxing. “For the last 48 hours, air conditioner in our home could not be operated due to persistent low voltage. If voltage improves, it is replaced by some wild fluctuations and AC could only be run at the risk of whole machine burning out any moment. This is happening in spite of the fact the all home appliances are running on power regulators. One can deal with one hour of power absence but consistent fluctuations and low voltage are 24-hour problems,” he said.

“Life seems to have taken a regressive leap during the last few days,” says Malik Hummayun of Walton Road. “Availability of power at the required voltage has become a rarity. With it, water has also become scarce, but for sweating. Most of eatables rot because of inconsistent running of refrigerators.