KOHAT: Local residents are troubled while preparing breakfast for school-going children due to gas outages and low pressure, forcing people of the resource-rich district to buy costly LPG cylinders.

“We cannot prepare food because of the very dim flames of gas,” complained a woman from the city.

The SNGPL staff said that under the recent agreement reached among the administration, lawmakers and the consumers gas was being supplied for two hours in the morning, at noon and in the evening.

Meanwhile, excessive electric loadshedding has also troubled the residents in the sizzling heat, especially on the outskirts of the city, areas of Jungle Khel, Shahpur union council, and the rural areas where even the official schedule of 12-hour loadshedding is being flagrantly violated.

“The consumers are being subjected to 18 to 22 hours of power suspensions,” said Shakir Bangash, an elder of Shahpur.

The residents said most people could not afford uninterrupted power supply at their homes as the price of a battery of 200 ampere had shot up to an unprecedented Rs45,000 from Rs19,000 last year.

Published in Dawn, August 17th, 2025