MUZAFFARABAD: The worst ever power loadshedding in the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) capital has triggered great unrest and anguish among people from all walks of life, with some threatening laying a siege to the sites of two under construction hydropower projects and others holding a protest rally outside the grid station, manned by the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda).

Interestingly, while AJK Prime Minister Chaudhry Abdul Majeed had issued a direction to the AJK Electricity Department (ED) that it should “bring an end to the undeclared loadshedding to provide relief to the masses”, officials confided to Dawn that the matter was beyond their authority.

“The government is taking measures to ensure that loadshedding is carried out according to a schedule so that common people and students do not suffer,” said Mr Majeed from Kashmir House Islamabad, where he chaired a meeting of AJK ED officials.

However, rejecting his statement as yet another ‘hollow claim’, civil society activists here blamed the “incompetence and impassivity” of the government and the political leadership of AJK for such an invidious treatment to their region at the hands of Wapda.

According to them, since early last month, power supply was being shut after every 50 minutes for more than an hour, in what had no parallel in any provincial capital.

“Our apathetic government and political leadership has turned their capital into a city of darkness. Both the government and opposition lack courage to protest the biased attitude of Wapda towards their region,” said Raza Ali Khan, president Central Bar Association Muzaffarabad.

He lamented that during Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s recent visit to Muzaffarabad, AJK leadership did not raise the issue of unjustified loadshedding and instead kept on flattering him.

Last week, members of Central Bar Association had boycotted judicial work and staged a demonstration outside the district headquarters complex to protest against the ‘unbearable loadshedding’.

Accusing Wapda of denying AJK its due share of electricity, Mr Khan asked the authority and the AJK government to ensure that Muzaffarabad was subjected to the same duration of loadshedding as was being enforced in the federal capital.

“If the prevailing practice continues after December 14, we will impede construction of the two hydropower projects on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad by laying siege to them,” he said.

“If our cities remain plunged in darkness, we will not let others keep their towns illuminated,” he said.

While Mr Khan gave a week’s deadline to the AJK government and Wapda, another civil society group would however stage a protest rally towards Wapda-administered grid station here on Monday on the same issue.

“In an area that has demonstrated exemplary self-sacrifice to help Pakistan overcome its energy crisis, this kind of discrimination is mind-boggling… It’s intolerable,” said Zahid Amin, a leading civil society activist whose Muzaffarabad City Development Foundation (MCDF) has given the call for Monday’s rally.

Mr Amin said Monday’s rally would be peaceful, but the first of a series of protests people of Muzaffarabad had envisaged.

When Dawn contacted a senior AJK ED official, he said loadshedding problem was bound to aggravate in the coming days in the absence of some urgently required measures at the hands of Wapda.

“Beyond Abbottabad power is being supplied to 11 grid stations, nine of them in KP and the rest in AJK, by a single circuit line due to which loadshedding had increased,” said the official, who declined to be named.

“Unless Wapda constructs a double circuit line or as an immediate measure constructs a 220-kV grid station in Mansehra, the problem will persist,” he added.

Published in Dawn, December 8th, 2014