KOHAT: The police arrested three Afghans for organising a music programme on Friday night and resorting to fire, causing inconvenience to the residents of nearby houses, especially patients.

During the raid, a group of transgender persons also had a scuffle with the raiding party of the Junglekhel police station.

The music show was organised in a house in front of gate no 2 of the posh KDA Township.

President of the transgender persons’ association Jaidi along with Seena Bandh, however, alleged that whenever they performed at a music programme the police reached the spot and snatched the money from them.

However, SHO Roman Shah told Dawn that a local resident had called him, asking to stop the loud playing of music and firing at night.

He said the police arrested three Afghans for festive firing and organising the function. They also confiscated weapons from them.

POWER CUTS: The Kohat city mayor, civil society activists and businessmen have criticised the Peshawar Electric Supply Company for subjecting consumers to prolonged loadshedding in urban and rural localities in sweltering heat.

Speaking at a protest meeting, chairman of Sons of Kohat Shah Mehmood, city mayor Qari Sher Zaman, chairman of Grand Businessmen Alliance Haji Abid and Qaumi Tehreek leader Ameer Khan Afridi demanded an end to the excessive outages.

They said scheduled and unscheduled power cuts of six to 15 hours had paralysed life. They warned to stage a demonstration in front of the Pesco office if the loadshedding duration was not curtailed.

A Pesco official, Daud Khan told Dawn on Saturday that the only solution to the excessive power cuts was the construction of the promised 220KV grid required to divide the load of the 132KV grid station.

He said the 132KV grid had been overloaded as the whole of Bangash belt up to the border of the Hangu district had been put on it.

The Pesco official said the grid was operating with a surplus load on its 32 feeders. He said eight more feeders had been demanded for the grid.

He said the 132KV grid had caught fire many times in the past.

Published in Dawn, August 13th, 2023