LAHORE: Consumers in Lahore and adjoining districts have been facing hours-long loadshedding, including forced outages and intermittent tripping, daily for the past couple of days.

The situation has worsened since Wednesday night when the power transmission and distribution systems became overloaded due to severe heat coupled with high humidity. This has led to frequent tripping of electricity supply, occurring every 10 minutes. As a result, authorities have been compelled to implement load shedding for three to four hours in areas served by high-recovery feeders and for five to eight hours in areas with low-recovery or high-loss feeders.

A resident of Johar Town said, “Last night was unimaginably challenging due to frequent tripping alongside scheduled load shedding during the day. Life is truly becoming very difficult.”

According to another resident, the combination of tripping and load shedding is also causing damage to home appliances.

He said, “Our refrigerator encountered technical issues last night due to tripping. I had to call a mechanic to fix it.”

He said that over the past few days, Lesco (Lahore Electric Supply Company) has been implementing loadshedding at various times, particularly during peak hours.

A Lesco officer, who requested anonymity, explained that forced loadshedding for three and a half hours is being enforced in Lahore and other Lesco-served areas under the jurisdiction of high-recovery feeders. However, he said that the situation is more problematic in areas under the jurisdiction of low-recovery/high-loss feeders. There, loadshedding for five to eight hours is being enforced. He added that the situation is particularly challenging in rural areas, attributing the tripping and loadshedding to the overloaded system caused by the substantial electricity consumption during the ongoing hot weather.

Lesco Chief Executive Officer Shahid Haider was unavailable for comment.

Meanwhile, two Lesco officials were injured by two consumers during an operation in Chauburji Park against electricity theft.

According to a spokesperson, when the team inspected some connections, the accused individuals attacked the team members, injuring two of them.

The team subsequently had the injured officials admitted to the hospital and managed to apprehend the attackers.

Encroachments: In a major anti-encroachment operation, the joint teams of LDA, MCL and police on Thursday took 12 people into custody for offering resistance.

The teams demolished encroachments in front of 500 shops and other properties on College Road.

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2023