SWABI: Residents of Zaida union council and its suburbs blocked the Zaida-Topi road for hours here on Sunday to record their protest against prolonged power outages.

The local people gathered in the main market where they were soon joined by traders and activists of different political parties. They chanted slogans against the government and demanded immediate reduction in the loadshedding hours.

The market remained closed during the protest while the passengers were compelled to wait for opening of the road.

The protesters warned that they would not open the road till getting concrete assurance from officials concerned that the power outages would be reduced and carried out according to the schedule.

Addressing the protesters, the traders and political activists said that they were ready to work collectively for ending the prolonged power outages. They said that despite the prime minister’s directives that loadshedding should not exceed two hours they had been facing 12 to 14 hours outages daily.

The speakers said that some of the leaders, officials and departments in the country were getting uninterrupted free power supply, but the consumers who had been paying their electricity bills were made to suffer for the entire day and night through frequent power outages.

Later, they ended the protest on the assurance that the loadshedding hours would be reduced.

Meanwhile, gas supply to various areas of Topi tehsil was stopped after the supply line of SNGPL got damaged in Topi city, creating problems for the consumers.

Published in Dawn, June 6th, 2022