SWABI, Jan 30: A 19-hour long power breakdown resulted in loss to the Peshawar Electric Supply Company and crippled life, especially the business activities, here on Tuesday.

Pesco officials said power supply to the whole city, Chargagh feeder, Kernal Sher Kili feeder and Baja feeder was suspended due to the main cable in the Swabi grid station being damaged at 11pm on Monday.

They said the cable was repaired by 10am on Tuesday but the circuit breaker in the same grid station went out of order and the supply could not be restored till the evening.

A Pesco spokesman said that the breakdown had occurred because over-loading had melted the power line. He said power remained suspended until 9.30am, when it was restored for about 40 minutes, but due to overloading the main circuit breaker burnt out. “We had to replace the circuit breaker and finally power was restored at around 4.15pm”, the spokesman said.

Officials said the breakdown caused loss of millions of rupees to Pesco.

The power breakdown also hit the Pakistan Telecommunication Company and it had to use generators to run the digital exchanges.

The business community alleged that the breakdown had occurred due to negligence of the staff.

The patients also confronted problems as none of the hospitals in  the district has power generator and the district hospital’s generator was out of order.

The power supply was resumed at 6pm after suspension of 19 hours.

FOUR HELD: Pesco staff, in its campaign against power theft has arrested and fined four persons who had taken direct connection from the PVC wire.