LAHORE, May 10: Long and repeated power outages, fluctuations and trippings on Wednesday tested patience of citizens, as the mercury shot up to 42 degrees Celsius with 44 per cent humidity in day time.

Though the Lahore Electric Supply Company claimed that only 109 major and 16 minor trippings took place, the people disputed the figures saying the actual number of outages and trippings was much higher than what the company system recorded.

Among the worst-hit localities were parts of the walled city, areas along Bund Road, Sabzazar Colony and colonies along the canal. Residents of these localities made repeated calls to this newspaper office complaining about power failures and a lack of response from the Lesco staff for timely restoration of power supply.

The company staff maintained that it lacked the manpower and equipment to deal with such a crisis, which had hit the city during the last week or so.

A doctor from Gulberg said: “I had to pull shutters of my clinic down because there was no electricity there. When I reached home, my children had gone to their grandmother’s house because of the shutdown at my residence at Tech Society along the canal.” He said the similar situation was in Shadman where his family had gone.

“It is in fact a failure of governance,” was the response of another irritated consumer, who lives in the walled city. He said the government had only two recipes for the entire range of social and economic problems i.e either privatise everything or import anything. This new paradigm had taken the official focus away from policy planning to solve people’s problem, he said.

He stressed that the government had to change the attitude of passing the buck and accept the responsibility of the system failure.

“There is no one to turn to for genuine complaints,” said Muhammad Rafi, of Walton Road. He said no Lesco official was available at the offices to solve the problems of the people.

“They cannot go to court because there were no standards to judge the performance of these distribution companies.”

He said the people faced a great deal of difficulty because there was no fixed time of power shutdown. “Once the power goes off, there is no way to know the reason for the failure or shutdown as the telephone numbers written on the bill remain unattended most of the time.”

Defending the company’s position, an official said: “It is easy to blame the Lesco lower staff for everything, but one must not lose the overall situation.” During the last few years, he said, the company had decided to squeeze the facilities of lower staff and there were hardly any security gadgets and other basic equipment, transportation and cranes.

“The company, which grants a luxury vehicle costing Rs5 million to its SEs, has not been able to provide even bicycles to its ground staff. The demotivated and dejected staff is working beyond its capacity,” he said.

Answering a question, he said in order to address a complaint the lower staff had to spend from its pocket for transportation. “In such a situation, how is it possible to help the consumers?” he asked.

He further said “the company is now providing 150 litres of oil to each truck every month. One can imagine how many days a heavy truck can run on this quantity of oil.”