NAWABSHAH, Jan 9: The Hyderabad Electricity Supply Company (Hesco) has imposed hours-long load-shedding on the city and its adjoining areas despite announcing earlier that it will observe half an hour long power cut every four hours on daily basis.

The city was without power from 6 am to 12 noon on Tuesday followed by two hours load-shedding thrice during the day and suffered power suspension on Wednesday from 8 am till 10 am and from 1:30 pm to 5:30 pm.

No responsible Hesco official was available for comments. It was a common complaint that Hesco office’s numbers were either busy or if someone did attend the call they just repeated the stereotypical statement that main supply from Hyderabad had failed.Hesco Executive Engineer Najam Abro said that he was unaware about the problem but added that the power breakdown was due to less power generation.

Superintending engineer of Hesco Nawabshah circle Nazeer Ahmed Khyber admitted that the load-shedding was being imposed for 4-6 hours daily due to unavailability of electricity. The crisis would end by Thursday, he said.

Sources in the Hesco said that the crisis was caused by unannounced and unscheduled load-shedding by Regional Control Centre of Hyderabad.

The load-shedding also caused shortage of drinking water after pumping machines installed at water supply had to stop functioning for hours.

The business community complained why they were being deprived of electricity when they were paying heavy bills as well as other taxes every month.

People could not light up their heaters to get warm in the chilly weather when mercury had dropped to 1.5 degree Celsius over the last week.

District council: The members of Nawabshah District Council on Wednesday demanded an independent enquiry led by the United Nations Commission into the assassination of Pakistan People’s Party chairperson Benazir Bhutto.

The members attended the council’s session wearing black armbands as a mark of grief over the tragic death of the great leader and politician.

Syed Munir Shah, member and chairman of the district accounts committee, termed the murder of Benazir Bhutto a great national loss, which had shocked the entire nation, particularly people of Sindh. He said that the first day reaction was very much natural but for the destruction of public and private property, in which hidden hands who aimed to use people’s anger in creating linguistic riots were also involved.

He tabled a resolution demanding registration of FIR about Liaquat Bagh incident as per the will of Bhutto family and sought renaming the Nawabshah Stadium as Benazir Stadium. The resolution was unanimously approved.