ISLAMABAD/RAWALPINDI: The 10-hour long power outage in the early hours of Sunday disrupted routine life for residents in the twin cities and adjoining areas.

With no electricity to power security equipment, the power outage also caused alarm for military installations in the garrison city.

Automated Teller Machines (ATM) at many banks were also out of order until evening.

As water could not be pumped into tanks many houses were without water. Mobile phones or laptop batteries could not be recharged which caused inconvenience to residents and disrupted Sunday morning plans for many.

At about 11:55pm on Saturday night, the twin cities and adjoining areas were plunged into darkness.

“Electricity supply was restored at around 3:10am on Sunday but it went off again for another three hours. By evening, electricity was restored for all areas of Rawalpindi and Islamabad,” Iesco Chief Engineer Operation Faiz Hussain told Dawn.

However, he said electricity supply to all industrial units will remain suspended as there is a shortage of electricity.

He said the government has given priority to domestic and commercial consumers in the cities and electricity supply for industries will be restored when the government issues a directive.

“Residents will experience routine electricity loadshedding and main supply has been restored. From Monday there will be no out of routine loadshedding,” he said.

Anwar Khan, a resident of sector I-14, said that electricity supply was restored at 10am but 15 minutes later there was another outage.

An official of Islamabad Electric Supply Company (Iesco) requesting anonymity said this happens whenever the main transmission line is damaged.

“We cannot release electricity to all transmission lines at once because it can make the whole system collapse. Things will improve with every passing hour,” he said.

The power breakdown and fluctuations in electricity voltage damaged the ICs (integrated circuits) of Health Management Information System (HMIS) at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) and the system stopped working.

This system connects the computers in all the departments and the patient records, laboratory test results and other information is accessed through this system.

Dr Ayesha Esani confirmed to Dawn that the HMIS stopped working but it was restored by noon.

“We have generators to use during electricity loadshedding or power failure and luckily it was Sunday due to which Out Patient Department (OPD) was closed.

“Otherwise machines like MRI, CT Scan and others consume so much electricity. However we are prepared to deal with that kind of situation in future,” she said.

In many parts of Taxila and Wah, electricity supply was not restored until 1pm which caused immense problems for residents.

Asma Rani, a resident of Taxila, said: “We wash clothes and do other household chores on Sunday to prepare for the week, and today nothing could be done.”

Businesses suffered losses as no electricity was available for lighting and for running photocopy machines.

Imran Ali, a tailor, said: “We work long hours these days as it is wedding season. An entire work day has been wasted and now we will fall behind on our orders.”

The power outage combined with low gas pressure left residents with no way of heating houses.

“It’s so difficult to keep the house warm and my children keep catching cold,” said Aasia, a mother of three.

Published in Dawn January 26th , 2015

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