LAHORE: A large population in various city localities had to put up with power outage for several hours, including the entire Friday night, due to a fault in the 220kV Kot Lakhpat grid station.

Though the engineering teams tried hard to energise the grid station in the shortest time, they failed to do so. “We spent the entire night without light in hot and humid weather. We also tried hard to contact the respective area office of Lesco but no one attended calls,” deplores a resident of Attari Saroba.

“The Lesco officers should at least snub the officials deputed to receive calls from the complainants,” the annoyed consumer said.

Similar complaints were reported from other localities. According to a consumer, a resident of a locality near Attari Darbar, power supply was restored for a while during night hours. But, it again broke down. “We, after two hours, came to know that a major fault developed at grid station caused power suspension in our area,” he said. According to a spokesman for the Lahore electric supply company, the fault developed at a transformer of Kot Lakhpat grid station at about 12am, causing suspension of power supply for hours in several localities receiving electricity from 11kV feeders namely Hamza Town, Balloki, Hussain Soofi Aabad, Attari Darbar, Saroba and Industrial-1.

The spokesman said the teams restored power supply at about 4pm. But, another fault occurred at the grid (trolley heat up).

“So the teams again rushed to rectify the fault and succeeded in getting it removed at 11am on Saturday,” he maintained.

Meanwhile, the Lesco management on Saturday suspended from service its two officials on account of corruption.

According to spokesman, lineman Ghulam Muhammad (Tajpura subdivision) and meter reader Kashif Zaman (Cavalry Ground) were suspended from service. On the other hand, Lesco teams detected another 503 connections from where the customers were pilfering electricity in all its circles of five districts (Lahore, Sheikhupura, Nankana Sahib, Kasur and Okara) on the 294th day of anti-power theft campaign.

The Lesco spokesman told the media on Saturday that the company has also submitted applications against electricity thieves, out of which 172 FIRs have been registered in respective police stations, while 21 suspects have been arrested by the respective police.

On the 294th consecutive day of the anti-power theft campaign, the spokesman added, large commercial consumers were also found involved in electricity theft and their connections were severed and charged with detection units.

Among the seized connections, 13 were commercial, 11 agricultural, one industrial and 478 domestic, and all these connections were disconnected and charged with a total of 460,384 units as detection bill amounting to Rs16.158 million.

Published in Dawn, July 21st, 2024