LAHORE, May 6: The public and traders have reacted sharply to the government’s decision to shutter shops by 8pm, calling it lethal for business in the city, and, by extension, in the country.

Officially 30-minute disappearance of power every six hours, undeclared outages and persistent low voltages have slowed down business, they say.

“With temperatures shooting up, one can hardly live a decent life with two hours of loadshedding,” says Abdur Rashid Bhatti from Iqbal Park.

Most of the recently-constructed houses in the cities like Lahore are airtight, which become more of an oven in the sweltering heat without air-conditioners.

If the government wanted to deprive the people of power four times a day, it should have first apportioned blame and punished the officials responsible for the fiasco, says Basharat Naqvi of Samanabad. The people and the media knew that power shortages would come around 2006, but no one in the government worked to address the issue, he said.

Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) officials, who say that they were not allowed to set up thermal units, have never informed the public about their helplessness, he said.

He demanded the government set up a commission to look into the reasons for the fiasco or it would set a bad example of letting those go free who committed the crime, he said.

“Closing down shops by 8pm will destroy business in the country,” says Arshad Khan of Anarkali.

In the extreme heat, which would worsen in the next few weeks, people hardly left their houses for shopping during the day, he said, adding that it was by 7pm when people left houses for shopping. Due to traffic rush, it takes almost an hour to get to a centre five kilometres from a place.

“How would business survive in these circumstances? With the manufacturing sector dwindling, as shown by electricity consumption pattern, government’s measures to squeeze the trading sector is a matter of national concern. Wapda charges the commercial sector most heavily from other sectors and even than axe has fallen on it,” said Mr Khan.

Power outages would result in increasing oil imports, says Chaudhry Jamil, an owner of a shopping centre on Ferozpur Road.

“Shop owners will install generators for power. They can never afford to shut their shops by 8pm as it will destroy their clientele, which they built over the years. So, a majority of them, if not all, will go for generators,” he said.