QUETTA, Aug 2: Heavy rain and flash floods have badly affected the highways and roads in Balochistan, including the under-construction Mekran coastal highway which has been damaged seriously on several places.
According to reports reaching here Saturday, certain parts of the coastal highway have been inundated with rainwater as a result.
Quetta-Sibi-Jaffarabad national highway has also been damaged due to flash flood where breaches have appeared at certain parts of the road, thus causing serious difficulties for vehicles to ply smoothly.
A major part of Quetta-Ziarat road, which was already in a poor condition, has been devastated due to recent rains and flash flood. Travelling on the road has become difficult and troublesome for the people, who have mostly dropped their programmes to go to Ziarat for excursion.
Meanwhile, the latest downpour in Nasirabad and Jaffarabad districts has once again caused serious losses to public and private property, including houses, roads and livestock.
Traffic between Nuttal and Dera Murad Jamali has been blocked as this under-construction section of the national highway has become muddy. —APP
POWER SUPPLY: Power supply to Balochistan has been disrupted as four towers of 220kv Guddu-Sibi double circuit transmission lines collapsed near Bakhatirabad due to thunderstorm and heavy rains, Our Staff Reporter in Quetta adds.
A Quetta Electricity Supply Company (Qesco) spokesman said here on Saturday the towers collapsed late on Friday night.
He said Quetta and other parts of Balochistan were getting the power supply from just one circuit of 220kv transmission line. “With the collapse of four towers, power supply from Guddu is reduced to two-thirds,” he said, and added that a load-shedding programme had been chalked out for the province to resolve the problem created due to shortage of power supply from Guddu.
In the meantime, Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) engineers have reached the site of the collapse of the four big towers and work to replace these has begun.