July 25, 2008	Friday	Rajab 21, 1429

SUKKUR, July 24: The people of Sukkur and its adjacent areas have been braving intense unannounced loadshedding which started from Tuesday, making their lives hell.

With the advent of summer, hours-long loadshedding has been launched by Hesco and people of Sukkur and its near-by areas are facing 6 to 10 hours of loadshedding, which is apart from the unannounced loadshedding carried out by the regional control center (RCC), Hyderabad, thus adding to miseries of people.

However, since Tuesday, the situation has gone worse and people are made to brave unannounced loadshedding along with the scheduled one, due to which duration of loadshedding has expanded to 12 hours.

In this connection, when contacted, the officials at the grid station, requesting anonymity, said that officers at the RCC Hyderabad were shutting down power supply to the grid, saying that, some of the units at Guddu thermal power station were out of order.

On contact, the shift incharge of the control room of Guddu thermal power station told Dawn that all units of the power station were running smoothly and producing electricity according to the capacity.

Sukkur sub-division-II SDO Abdul Ghaffar Mako told Dawn that the RCC Hyderabad were shutting down the power supply to grid stations of the city without informing the local Hesco officials.

However what ever the situation may be, the ultimate sufferers are the people of Sukkur who have been left at the mercy of Hesco officers.

TRANSFORMER: Mean-while, scores of people of Bashir Abad Muhalla of Thul town staged a protest demonstration outside the local press club in protest against Hesco failure to replace a dysfunctional transformer.

The protestors told the newsmen that 25 days ago a transformer of their locality had developed some fault and since then they were without electricity.

They alleged that the Hesco officials were demanding bribe for replacing the dead transformer.