LAHORE, March 25: Water shortages caused by prolonged and incessant electricity loadshedding in almost every part of the Punjab capital on Sunday forced a large number of Lahorites to take to streets and lodge protest.

The chief executive of the province, Mian Shahbaz Sharif, was among the somewhat 'peaceful protesters' who verbally condemned what he called discrimination against the most populated province of the country. Most of other protesters turned violent, burning used tyres, placing electricity poles and other hurdles on roads to disrupt traffic flow, smashing shop windows and attacking private and public transport vehicles alike.

The outages first brought traders to The Mall where they held a big demonstration near Charing Cross for quite sometime, defying a ban they themselves had proposed against blockade of the main artery.

Punjab University students lost their temper at around noon. Raising slogans against the federal government, they joined the men, women and children from the adjoining Shah Di Khoi in their march up to the Canal Bridge Road near the Jinnah Hospital underpass and blocked it for traffic.

However, power supply was not restored when the fatigued protesters started dispersing after three hours or so.

Unable to find water even for cooking since early morning, the residents of localities along Bund and Ring roads, besides RA Bazaar, gathered on the Canal Bank Road near Dharampura underpass, blocking it for three hours or so by burning used tyres.

The two blockades resulted in a traffic mess not only on the Canal Bank Road but also on adjoining thoroughfares that took another two hours or so to clear. The worst affected were the motorists who had opted to use the road for their onward journey to various destinations through motorway.

At the Walton Road, the protesters broke up the locks of over a dozen shops, smashed windowpanes of several others and partially damaged a number of private vehicles and buses.

According to officials of Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco), the urban feeders in the entire country had to suffer around 16-hour loadshedding, with each outage lasting four to five hours, and rural feeders touched 20-hour outages.

“There is virtually no electricity in the country if the VVIPs, hospitals, defence and industrial exemptions are counted out, which cost the company well over 2,000MW,” says a company official. With total generation dipping to less than 7,500MW even during the peak hours, the company was facing a deficit of around 7,000MW by Saturday evening. Take these exemptions out, and the country had less than 5,000MW against total computed demand of 14,500MW.