LAHORE, July 31: Unscheduled, persistent and long spells of loadshedding have been keeping the Lahorites on their nerves’ edge for the last one week, ever since heat and humidity took control of the city.

Tuesday was another bad day for Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) consumers who, from virtually every part of the city, kept calling Dawn office to complain about missing electricity, bemoaning the apathy of the power planners.

Lesco chief Akram Arian, however, denied any unscheduled loadshedding in the city and said: “Every feeder in the city is shutdown twice a day (24-hour) for thirty minutes. There is no more loadshedding. Yes, there is some construction work going on in some city areas, which necessitates local shutdowns and in some area some development work is going on. Apart from these factors, there is no shedding of load.”

“The complete denial by the Lesco of any unscheduled loadshedding only rubs salt on the consumers’ wounds,” says one such complainant. “Electricity has been missing for the past five hours and no one from the local Lesco office is prepared to come clean on the causes. During these five hours, three different respondents from the local Lesco office have given as much reasons for the outage. Which one is to be believed is callers’ choice, but the fact remains that there is no electricity in the house,” he lamented.

“One can imagine some load management during the peak hours or during the day when offices are open and guzzling power, but loadshedding during the night and wee hours of the day is totally beyond one’s comprehension,” says Muhammad Aleem of Allama Iqbal Town. “Power goes off in the middle of the night when apparently demand had dropped by almost

30 to 35 per cent. The trouble with Lesco officials or national power planners is that they keep shifting their stances. With weather fluctuations, they keep changing their verdicts on shortage and creating confusion. For the last weeks, there is eight-hour shutdown in Allama Iqbal Town area because the Lesco is shifting power lines on the main boulevard. One cannot believe that kind of work planned and carried out in the middle of hot and humid weather. It is a situation that creates frustration, anger and feeling of helplessness and underscores the official priorities,” he bemoaned.

“The fact that there is no court of appeal against this official apathy and lies make the situation worst,” says Malik Ijaz from Baghbanpura. The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) has failed to implement any performance standards and some kind of penalties for failure to meet them, giving the distribution companies a margin for telling gross lies and deceit. Some authority should be created to adjudicate the crisis, which is worsening by the day. Some sporadic but violent protests have already been reported in the press, which could turn ugly if no remedy is found at the earliest,” he said.