SWABI: A sit-in staged on the premises of Peshawar Electric Supply Company’s offices here ended on Friday without achieving the main objective of forcing zero loadshedding in Swabi.

Swabi Action Committee (SAC) and Da Haq Awaz (DHA) organised the protest with its leaders and workers remaining inside the Pesco building till midnight. They had earlier vowed to stay put till their demand was met.

Ihsanul Haq Bamkhelvi, DHA president, led the protesters’ negotiation team, while Inayatullah Khan, Pesco superintendent engineer, Swabi, led the power utility’s team.

When contacted, Mr Bamkhelvi told Dawn: “I cannot say that the negotiations were successful. We had a detailed discussion on our 11-point agenda and the officials made it clear that ending loadshedding, i.e. achieving zero power outage in Swabi, was not within their power, expressing their helplessness.”

“We could not deviate from our jurisdiction. What is in our power, only that would be pledged and promised with protesting leaders,” Mr Inayatullah told Dawn soon after the protesters made their way into the Pesco building on Thursday.

Mr Bamkhelvi declared that deadlock continued over zero loadshedding and the talk ended in a failure and they decided to consult public for the next course of action.

However, observers said that both SAC and DHA failed to muster people’s support to put the district and provincial officials of Pesco under pressure to end the loadshedding.

TWO DROWN: Two youth belonging to Peshawar drowned in separate incidents here on Friday.

Sajid Khan drowned in the Pehur canal while beating the heat along with his friends.

A Rescue 1122 divers’ team started a search for the body.

Also, Mohammad Adil drowned in the Indus River at Gar Yousufi area on Thursday, rescuers said.

Efforts were on to recover his body.

Published in Dawn, June 14th, 2025