ISLAMABAD: Water and Power Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif announced on Thursday that there would be no loadshedding during Sehr, Iftar and Taraveeh.

Speaking at a news conference, he promised zero loadshedding for domestic consumers and mosques from 6:30pm to 10:30pm for Iftar and Taraveeh and one hour before and after Sehr.

The minister said power supply would be diverted from the industrial sector to residential consumers between 7pm and 3am.

The industry had been enjoying continuous power supply for the past several months, he said, adding that it would now switch to two shifts from three because there would be loadshedding at night.

“The electricity saved from an eight-hour loadshedding in the industry sector will be provided to domestic consumers,” he said.

Responding to a question, he said sometimes the situation was hard to control but every possible effort would be made to observe the new schedule of loadshedding.

He appealed to domestic consumers to use as minimum energy as possible.

Khawaja Asif claimed that power generation on Wednesday had crossed the 16,000MW mark to make record and said the demand-supply gap now stood at about 3,600MW.

He said the government had slightly improved the transmission system by inducting new transformers over the past few months. He said a complaint cell had been set up at the ministry to receive public calls and emails round-the-clock.

Published in Dawn June 19th, 2015

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