HYDERABAD, Sept 1 Residents of Shahi Bazaar forced shopkeepers to close their business in their area on Tuesday to protest prolonged outages since Monday evening.

A complete strike was also observed in Sanghar against Hesco.

Protesters, including majority of youngsters, raised slogans against the Hesco authorities and union's office-bearers of the bazaar for not cooperating with them.

Though shopkeepers were not ready to close their business because they were facing low business activities due to heavy rains, the protesters forced them to join the protest.

The protesters said the transformer of their area was burnt on Monday and since then no one had turned up to replace it to restore power to the area.

They said women, children and elderly were suffering a lot in the absence of electricity.

Some angry protesters pelted few shops with stones when shopkeepers refused to close them. The protesters also lit bonfires in the main bazaar.The area of Shahi Bazar is connected with Gari Khata sub-division of Hesco where recovery drive is also in progress by the power utility management and against power pilferage through kunda system.

Anjuman Tajiran Shahi Bazaar president Saleem Vohra said that new cables were provided for the residents of Shahi Bazaar but some of them were providing electricity through circuit system on payment which resultantly put extra load on transformer and burnt it. He said that people of the areas were illegally supplying electricity from their lines.

He said the residents were facing power outage since Monday evening when their transformer was burnt while Hesco officials worked very slowly in such cases. He said the residents unnecessarily pressurised shopkeepers to close their shops so that their problem was resolved, adding that shopkeepers told them if their problem could be resolved by keeping their business closed then they were ready for it.

Hesco's spokesman Sadiq Kumbhar said the transformer of Shahi Bazar was burnt while two transformer burning incident were reported in Liaquat Colony as well.

He said that Shahi Bazar's transformer was being replaced by the officials concerned and added that in fact people were also resisting recovery drive and removal of kunda system.

The protesters also headed towards Resham Bazar to force closure of shops. When shopkeepers argued with them against the closure, hot words were exchanged between them and shopkeepers.

Our Sanghar correspondent adds A complete strike was observed in Sanghar against Hesco on Tuesday.

All the markets, shops and bazaars remained closed. Pushcart vendors also joined the strike. A large number of people took out a procession and reached local press club.

They were demanding an end to loadshedding and inflated power bills.