TIMERGARA: Residents of Adenzai tehsil here on Friday staged a rally in front of the Chakdara Press Club against electricity outages and low voltage and chanted slogans against the Pesco for its failure to ensure smooth power supply.

The protesters from Osakai, Chekho and Teeso areas chanted slogans against the local administration and police for registering an FIR against the village council nazim Amir Afzal, general councillor Nawab Khan, Sahibullah and Taj Khan for protesting against Pesco the other day. They blocked the Timergara-Peshawar Road for some time.

Later, speaking at a news conference Amir Afzal, Razi Khan and others said that the Pesco officials always stopped power supply to their villages illegally in order to manage overloading.

They said the illegal stoppage of electricity had caused acute shortage of drinking water at homes, markets and mosques.

They demanded of the Lower Dir administration and police high-ups to withdraw FIRs lodged against the local government representatives who had led power protesters.

They also demanded immediate end to prolonged power outage and threatened the people would block the road again if their demands were not met.

Also in the day, PPP village council naib nazim Mohammad Hussain told journalists that two feeders of the Saddo grid station were overloaded due to which people of Shekolai were facing unscheduled power outages. He demanded separate feeder for his village, saying the grid had the capacity to afford another feeder.

Similarly, the PPP district councillor and party spokesman in Lower Dir Alam Zeb complained the tehsil municipal administration Timergara had failed to provide clean drinking water to local population.

Talking to journalists he said the residents of Shangi Payeen, Bala, Naway Kalay, Mian Banda, Hawa Dherai, Chargorai and Koz Kalay were forced to consume contaminated water. He said the pipelines of these villages had rusted while drain water stood around the tube-wells, supplying water to the locality near the Timergara Press Club.'

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2017