LAHORE: As the country continued to sizzle at mid-40s Celsius, people faced loadshedding ranging between 14 to 18 hours on Tuesday.

The demand for power touched 23,000MW mark by 6pm and generation reeling at 14,800MW – a deficit of horrendous 8,200MW. Power experts feared that demand would rise by 500MW as evening progressed and night may be tougher if temperature did not drop.

It was not only temperature, humidity also added to the misery of the people. With rain just around the corner, if the meteorological forecast is to be believed, the humidity in Lahore in the morning was over 70 per cent and even more in upper parts of the province. Sindh sizzled 45 degree Celsius and Sibi (Balochistan) at 46 Celsius.

Commenting on the ministerial apology, a former managing director of the Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) said it came only because the prime minister had taken everyone to task a day before. Otherwise, the situation had been worst for the last two weeks but everyone in the ministry was sleeping over it. “The Monday press conference was only to sooth nerves at the prime minister secretariat, which reportedly had served a tough message to the ministry,” he said and added: “It was never meant to help improve the situation because both excuses that the minister presented were untrue – meant to deflect public anger. The system had generated and transmitted 16,105MW last year and it is part of the Pepco record. Why has minister chosen to insist on 15,000MW figure? The government needs to ponder.”

A former head of the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) said the system had sustained supply of over 15,000MW way back in 2010. “In the last four years, the company has added 4,000MVA capacity to its transmission system. On the distribution front, another 6,000MVAs have been added. Under these circumstances, it would be wrong to argue that system cannot take more than 15,000MW even if generated,” he maintained.

“The ministerial argument that industry is getting sustained supplies and people should sacrifice also does not sound true if taken in the backdrop of the industry’s protest over loadshedding,” says a member of the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association.

“The industry has been criticizing over 10 hours of outages. The relief to it for a day cost the chief executive of the Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) his job and liberty; the man is behind the bars, facing one charge after another.”

Published in Dawn, July 16th, 2014