QUETTA, March 19: Electricity supply to Quetta and 14 other districts of Balochistan was suspended after two pylons were blown up in Bolan and Nasirabad districts on Saturday. A Quetta Electric Supply Company spokesman said that explosive devices were placed under a pylon of 132kv Quetta-Sibi transmission line in Machh area of the Bolan district that were detonated by unidentified assailants. Another pylon of 220kv double circuit transmission line was blown up in the Chattar-Pholiji area of Nasirabad district early in the morning.

The Quetta district is being provided electricity from the Habibullah coastal power plant, the spokesman said. The plant is generating only 60MW instead of its capacity of 120MW because its two units have been lying out of order since long.

“We need 1,350MW to meet the demand in Quetta and 14 other districts, but currently only 60MW is available,” the spokesman said. Quetta is enduring 12 hours of loadshedding but the situation in other districts is even worse with outages there ranging between 20 and 22 hours.

Repair work on the damaged pylons could not be started on Saturday with officials linking it with security clearance. They said it would take at least a week to replace the destroyed pylons.