QUETTA: The power supply suspended on Saturday night could not be fully restored in Balochistan till Sunday evening and 28 districts, including Quetta, were suffering an acute shortage of electricity with a majority of them facing a complete blackout.

Of the 32 districts in the province, Gwadar, Turbat and Panjgur in Makran were getting uninterrupted supply from Iran, while the K-Electric was feeding Lasbela from Karachi.

Balochistan needed 1,600MW from the national grid for the 28 affected districts and after the massive breakdown that plunged 80 per cent of cities and towns into darkness, only around 160MW was available, an official of the Quetta Electric Supply Company (Qesco) told Dawn.

Blowing up of two power pylons between Dera Murad Jamali and Notal area of Nasirabad district was said to the main cause of the breakdown that affected Balochistan, parts of Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and parts of Punjab.

“Militants used high intensity explosives to blow up the pylons of 220kV supplying electricity to Balochistan from Guddu late on Saturday night. This affected the entire power supply system,” Qesco officials said.

They said three other huge pylons destroyed in Chattar area could also not be repaired so far.

The banned Baloch Republican Army (BRA) claimed responsibility for blasting the pylons.

The officials said Qesco was receiving 160MW from the Dadu-Khuzdar and Dera Ghazi Khan-Loralai transmission lines.

Banned Baloch Republican Army claims responsibility for blowing up pylons

The Uch power plants1 and 2 were also not producing electricity after the main 18-inch pipeline that was supplying gas from the field to them was blown up in Dera Murad Jamali.

“Both plants produce around 1,000MW,” officials said, adding that plant 2 also supplied electricity to Balochistan.

The Qesco officials said that in view of the acute shortage of supply, 12-hour loadshedding had been announced for Quetta, while 27 other districts would get the supply for just two hours a day.

“We have no other option but to increase the loadshedding,” a Qesco spokesman said, adding that the power cuts would continue till restoration of the required supply to the province.

Replacement of the destroyed pylons could not be started on Sunday and sources in the National Transmission and Dispatch Company said the work would be launched by Monday after security clearance.

However, work for replacing the three pylons blown up in Chattar area was under way.

Claiming responsibility for blowing up the two power pylons overnight, a BRA spokesman said that a pipeline supplying gas to Punjab had also been blown up.

Published in Dawn January 26th , 2015

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