RAWALPINDI, Oct 13: The acute power shortage has paralysed public life and business activities as the Islamabad Electric Supply Company (Iesco) decided on Monday to stretch the loadshedding hours from six to over eight hours a day.

While Iesco decided to observe one hour loadshedding after every two hours in urban areas, the rural areas adjoining Rawalpindi and Islamabad face over ten hours of power outages daily.

The chief executive of Iesco, Raja Abdul Ghafoor hinted at even more than eight hours of loadshedding in case the supply conditions do not improve.

He told Dawn that power generation capacity of Tarbela Dam had a shortfall of 700MW due to low water head in the Tarbela Lake. This is the worst situation in the last ten years, he said.

The power situation deteriorated following the annual closure of Qadirpur gas station and low water heads in Tarbela and Mangla dams. While Qadirpur gas station would restart operation soon, water level in dams could only be improved if heavy rainfall occurs in the catchment areas.

The prolonged hours of power cuts have virtually eliminated the difference between the announced and unannounced loadshedding as the staff of Iesco complaint offices at subdivisional levels just put the responsibility of power suspension on grid stations.

In addition to the official schedule of load management, there are many areas where Iesco observes loadshedding without any notification. Households and business community are among the hard hit by the extended hours of power outages.

Shahid Ghafoor Paracha, President of Anjuman-i-Tajiran Rawalpindi, said while the prevailing economic and financial situation had a negative impact on business activities the new loadshedding proved to be disastrous for business activities.

The city has a quota of 25 per cent of the entire load of Rawalpindi consisting of five circles: Islamabad, Chakwal, Attock, Rawalpindi and Jhelum. That 25 per cent quota has now proved insufficient to meet the growing electricity demand of the city which led to the indiscriminate loadshedding.

APP ADDS: President Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry Mohammad Ijaz Abbasi on Monday stressed the need for immediately bringing into operation seven thermal power houses which have been closed for annual maintenance.

He said this would help mitigate the power problem to some extent at a time when the crisis has touched new heights.

He said the government should take urgent remedial measures to improve the situation as the power crisis was badly hurting the business and industrial activities apart from creating problems for the public.

The ICCI chief said it was difficult for business and industry to flourish in an environment where they daily experienced 6-8 hours power shutdown.

He said commercial and industrial units needed steady power supply to run their machines and business activities.

He feared that if this trend continued, many industrial units would be left with no option but to close down their operations.