LAHORE, Oct 19: The Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) got an additional 70mcft gas on the intervention of Water and Power Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf on Sunday, generating an extra 400 to 450 megawatt to honour to a great extent its promise of reducing loadshedding.

“We have also arranged for uninterrupted power supply to ginning factories and oil mills in the south and for agriculture tubewells in the same region to enable wheat sowing there,” Pepco Director General Tahir Basharat Cheema told Dawn here.

Pepco announced on Saturday to reduce loadshedding from 12 to nine hours in urban and from 18 to 11 hours in rural areas in the country.

The worst power failures have paralysed life and business in the length and breadth of the country. The relief claimed to have been provided by Pepco could not normalise life even on the weekly holiday on Sunday.

There were reports of loadshedding every after one hour even in Lahore. Reports of power cuts for several hours also poured in from some localities in the city.

“We have implemented the decision to reduce the duration by 90 per cent. I am receiving complaints about the remaining 10 per cent uncovered area,” Mr Cheema said.

He said besides reducing the duration of loadshedding, Pepco had managed uninterrupted eight-hour supply to 1,200 ginning factories and oil mills in the south.

These mills were closed for want of power and could be run only with eight-hour uninterrupted supply. Mr Cheema said Pepco had also arranged for supplying power to tubewells in the wheat growing areas, beginning from south where the sowing starts early.

“We are going to provide eight-hour uninterrupted supply to 70 per cent tubewells at night and the remaining 30 per cent during the day in south Punjab,” he said.

Mr Cheema said the relief of three hours to the urban areas was evenly divided to day and night timings, and there would be no unannounced loadshedding.

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