Hell of a day for Lesco

Published September 6, 2014

LAHORE: With more than 100 feeders tripping, rain-related problems, hundreds of faulty transformers that needed replacement and many transmission lines falling, half of the city remained without power for the better part of the day on Friday and the situation had not improved by the time this report was filed.

Though the Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) had formally declared emergency, cancelling leaves of staff and calling everyone back to work but the situation did not improve because the “company is badly understaffed and under-equipped”.

What made the situation worse for people and the media, none of the officials of Lesco was available to explain the situation and remedial measures, if any. The mobile phone of its chief executive Rao Zamir remained consistently busy or unattended and he would not answer messages.

Similarly, Lesco Operation Director Javed Azad also remained unavailable, and so did the public relations department of the company. It was total confusion for everyone with major localities of city like Defence, Cavalry Grounds, most of the localities on the canal banks, Samanabad, Gulshan-i- Ravi, Northern and Western parts of the city suffered prolonged power breakdowns.

“It was collapse of the system,” says a Lesco official who did not want to be named. Only DHA sub-division had 54 transformers that needed to be replaced in the last 48 hours of rain. There are over 80 sub-divisions in the city and one can imagine what could have happened to all of them. The stubbornly persistent rains also hampered operations where the Lesco staff tried to retrieve the situation.

“What made the situation turn into major crises was the fact that each major transmission line serves four or five feeders,” the official says, adding that in order to repair fault at one feeder, the company has to switch off the line because its staff cannot work on live lines. So, each feeder takes down three or four more feeders for repair. It has a multiplier effect which means that problems in 100 feeders actually affected 500 feeders, out of total 800 feeders in the city.

This clarifies the situation on Friday, which would spill well into Saturday because neither the rains have stopped nor all the feeders repaired. The feeders were falling at greater pace, than the staff was able to recover, the official concedes.

“By the evening, out of 100 affected feeders, only 40 were recovered,” says another official of the company. The company has a staff shortage of over 1,000 employees – mostly technical. It has not been able to procure major and minor equipments for the last one year because of different reasons, transformers and meters included.

“It was day out of hell for a severely under-staffed and under-equipped company as the Mother Nature tested the company, consumers and the staff. Lesco declared emergency, cancelling all leaves of the staff and everyone told to get back to work without fail. But it was still very severely handicapped, for both manpower and necessary gadgets,” the official adds. Many trees fell on transmission lines and the company or the city government did not have enough cranes to remove them. Some of its cranes got stuck in the mud, caused by heavy showers, in different parts of the city.

The cumulative result was absence of electricity for major parts of the city and the day, the official admits and concludes: “The company can only apologise as it is completely helpless. Some of the localities were without power for the entire day, others for better part of the day and yet others have not got it restored yet. The consumers are struggling and so is the company.”

Published in Dawn, September 6th , 2014

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