LANDI KOTAL, Dec 7: The political administration will provide Rs500,000 to Wapda for repairing damaged electricity lines in the Landi Kotal tehsil.

An announcement to this effect was made on Tuesday at a meeting attended by Wapda officials, political authorities and local elders here.

The meeting was convened by Wapda officials to sort out growing public complaints about load shedding and low voltage in the tehsil. Tribal areas executive engineer Khalid Khan and Assistant Political Agent Abdul Baseer also attended the meeting.

The Wapda officials agreed to regulate the load shedding schedule with a two-hour power suspension to each of the six feeders in the Landi Kotal grid station. The meeting also decided to disconnect double electricity connections in the area.

Sources in the grid station alleged that some influential people of the areas had acquired connections from two feeders and when supply to one feeder was stopped, these people switched to the other which usually caused power breakdowns.

"In such cases, we are accused of unwarranted load shedding," said an official of the grid station. The residents of Landi Kotal have long been complaining about unannounced load sheddings and low voltage which, they alleged, had affected their daily life and also resulted in damaging their electrical appliances.

They accused Wapda linesmen of accepting gratifications from well-to-do residents of the area for ensuring uninterrupted power supply. The grid station officials, however, denied these charges and insisted that they disconnected power supply to a certain locality when their transformers were overloaded.

"Our transformers can take load up to 1,300 amperes only," the official said. As regards low voltage, they said, they received only 132kv electricity from the Warsak power house which was not sufficient to meet the power demand in the tehsil.

The grid officials described the grant for line repairs made by the political authorities as 'peanuts' and said that at least an amount of Rs20 million was required to repair the damaged lines.