PESHAWAR, May 8: Many areas of the NWFP, where the Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) is bearing rising line losses, will face daily loadshedding of up to three hours under its load management strategy.

Under the Pesco’s load management plan that came into force on Tuesday, there will be one to three loadshedding intervals of half an hour to one hour daily. But the total duration of loadshedding for an area will depend on line losses and dues’ recovery there.

In areas where recovery of dues was good and line losses were in the acceptable range, consumers would have to endure loadshedding of half an hour to one hour only even if electricity consumption was on the higher side there, said an official.

He said that in Peshawar electricity consumption in the Saddar area, for instance, was higher than many other parts of the city. But the locality would only face half an hour of loadshedding daily because there was no problem of dues recovery there.

Loadshedding in rural areas — including Regi, Palosi, Deh Bahader, Warsak Road, Badbher, Matani, Hazarkhwani, Landi Arbab and Pishtakhara, where Pesco was facing difficulties due to recovery of dues and power theft — could even exceed three hours a day, the official added.

He said that shopping centres in the province would be closed by 8pm as announced by the federal government. Implementation of such orders, he said, was the responsibility of the provincial government, adding that the ministry of water and power had sent letters to provincial chief secretaries on May 5 seeking issuance of a notification to this effect.

According to him, the chief secretaries of Punjab and Sindh had issued the notifications while response from the NWFP and Balochistan was awaited. He claimed that industrial units in the NWFP had been contacted to implement the load management plan.

“The industries have been asked to revise their working hours and reshuffle their holidays for helping the public utility in prudent load management.”

However, Peshawar Industrial Association president Numan Wazir said they had not heard anything about the load management plan from the Pesco so far, but most of the industrial units were ready to avoid running their machinery during peaks hours.