RAWALPINDI, Oct 16: The Islamabad Electric Supply Company (Iesco) is consistently increasing loadshedding hours in the wake of deepening power crisis, making lives of the residents of twin cities miserable.

Power now goes off more frequently in addition to the announced timings and not a single sub-divisional complaint office has an answer to the unscheduled outages.

The performance of sub-divisional complaint offices has gone down with the poor attitude of the staff. At the same time, the staff at the complaint offices term the public anger unjustified as the lower staff is not responsible for the worsening power crisis.

As areas connected to the Race Course Feeder faced unscheduled loadshedding, the relevant SDO came with a non-serious answer to a complainant, saying that “the fault in the power distribution network might have been caused by a bird stuck up in the high tension cable.”

Iesco complaint offices are not fully equipped to handle public complaints about loadshedding and disruption in the power supply. They lack staff, vehicles as well as safety equipment, resulting in hours-long delays in attending public complaints.

People are at loss over the long hours of announced and unannounced loadshedding. During the day, consumers in Rawalpindi hardly get electricity for 10 hours, whereas Iesco promises only 8 to 10 hours of loadshedding.

Federal Minister for Water and Power Raja Pervez Ashraf, who happens to hail from Rawalpindi, remains aloof from the situation in his home district and has taken no measure to improve the power supply.

The people of Rawalpindi have no word of assurance from the federal minister as to when the situation would improve and what measures the government was taking to tackle the power crisis.

Rather the public at large, particularly the business community, has expressed its concern over the performance of the democratic government which had raised electricity charges particularly for the evening time when business was at its peak time and families were together at home. Due to fluctuating power supply, electronic appliances were also being damaged.

The business community in the cantonment and city areas has expressed its resentment over the raise in power tariff. The traders consider it unjustified and an extra burden.