PESHAWAR: Electricity consumers belonging to various localities here have expressed serious concern over the prolonged outages and threatened to start protest demonstrations outside the Wapda House if loadshedding is not stopped within a week.

The residents of Muslimabad, Liaquatabad, New Garhi, Kakar, Bakhshipul and other rural areas of Peshawar said that they had been subjected to 18 hours loadshedding on daily basis.

According to a statement issued here on Friday, the decision to start agitation was taken in a joint meeting of elected representatives of different union councils, including Hassan Garhi, Kankola and Haryana. The participants said that the consumers in their localities were regularly paying bills, but even then they were subjected to prolonged outages. He said that students were also unable to study because of loadshedding.

“Our people are ready to search rented buildings and shift to any other locality to avoid the menace of loadshedding as all the people are facing problems,” said Raza Mohammad, a district council member of Hassan Garhi. He said that the people had been left with the only option to besiege the Wapda House in protest.

Similarly, elders of Landi Arbab area have also warned to block the Ring Road and Bara Road in protest against loadshedding in different localities connected with the Arbab Landi sub-division.

Mohammad Afzal, Azmat Khan and Nisar Khan of Nasirbad said that during daytime power supply was suspended for every second hour, while at night it was cut off for indefinite time and thus they were left at the mercy of mosquitoes.

They said that if corrective measures were not adopted the people would face serious problems due to prolonged power outages this summer.

The people of Atta Mohammad Garhi also criticised the Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) for observing 18 hours loadshedding in the area.

However, a Pesco spokesman said that use of electricity was increasing due to the start of summer and as such load on the distribution system would increase with each passing day. He said that the only way to overcome the problems was to minimise power consumption, especially during the peak hours i.e. from 6.00pm to 11:00pm .

He also urged the industrial consumers to extend cooperation to save energy and all commercial consumers to close down shopping plazas by 8:00pm.

Published in Dawn, April 30th, 2016