RAWALPINDI: Amid hot and humid weather, two to three hours power outages daily have added to the miseries of the people in the garrison city as water could not be supplied to the citizens for want of electricity.

The Islamabad Electric Supply Company (Iesco) Chief Executive Officer Dr Amjad Khan told Dawn that there was no load shedding in any part of the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

However, he said overloaded transformers go out of order and repair takes time. “To repair the fault, Iesco switched off the main supply line of the area,” he said.

He said that in some areas, Iesco was upgrading the system and it had to stop the supply. “There is no load shedding in any part of the city and cantonment area,” he said.

On the other hand, the residents of Adiala Road, Dhoke Ratta and Gulraiz Housing Scheme said that they faced two to three hours power cuts on Saturday. They said that due to power outages, they had to spend time without fans in humid weather.

Naseeb Khan, a resident of Gulraiz Housing Scheme, said that his family spent hot day without fan as for common man it was difficult to install UPS device or solar fans.

He said the electricity had become expensive and it was not available.

In several localities in the Rawalpindi, unannounced power loadshedding had escalated after the heatwave gripped the twin cities that affected housewives, senior citizens and children.

Loadshedding also hit the smooth supply of water in city and cantonment areas as the power failure had disturbed the working of 320 tubewells including 260 tubewells in city and 60 in the cantonment area.

The civic authorities said that due to frequent power cuts, the timetable of tube wells and filtration plants had disturbed. They said that low pressure of water supply was a common complaint received by the cantonment and Wasa authorities. Rawalpindi Cantonment Traders Association Secretary General Zafar Qadri said that there was no load-shedding but the Iesco had shut down the electricity fore the repair work.

He said once the machinery in the business outlets went off then it took two hours to restart it and frequent power outages affected the business activity.

He held the government’s wrong policies and imposition of taxes in utility bills and other heads responsible for their woes. He said the purchasing power of the people had weakened and the work of the business community went down.

Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2024