VEHARI, Dec 31: People in the Vehari district and adjoining areas strongly protested against the unscheduled loadshedding. At least 18 to 20 hours of daily loadshedding is causing a great deal of inconvenience to the general public while the worst sufferers are traders and industrialists. While rural areas are facing up to 22 hours of power suspension.

The Mepco’s Vehari circle has started long hours of loadshedding in clear violation of the Wapda chairman’s orders who permitted maximum of four-hour outage in 24 hours.

The situation in Machinwal and Luddan Karampur areas is not different either.

A group of resident of Chak 9-11/WB said they were facing acute shortage of water for their crops and drinking purposes because of suspension of power supply to tubewells.

Most of rural health centres and basic health units are without power supply and doctors do not visit patients which adds to their suffering.

Kissan Board Pakistan spokesman Jawed Husain Shah said the prolong hours of outages was greatly affecting the farm sector in the district and its adjoining areas.

Vehari’s PPP former secretary-general Rao Sajid said the government did not want the people to watch TV channels telecasting programmes on the late prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Representatives of various trade organizations, including steel traders, sanitary association and Anjuman Tajran, said that refrigerators, TV sets, VCRs, CD players and other electronic items worth millions of rupees were damaged as a result of tripping in Vehari.

They threatened to go on strike if the Mepco authorities did not redress their grievances.

When contacted, XEN Muhammad Ishfaque said the Mepco was not responsible for the loadshedding because officials on duty were bound to follow instructions from the Islamabad control center.

Saeed Ahmed, an official of the Islamabad control center, denied the report that the centre issued any order regarding long hours of power loadshedding.

SAHIWAL: Wapda has launched 16 hours of power loadshedding in rural areas and eight hours in urban areas of Sahiwal.

Earlier, the authority had announced four hours of loadshedding in the country.

The badly affected areas of Sahiwal are: Harappa, Noorshah, Kamir, Tariq Bin Ziad Colony, Kot Khadim Ali Shah, Kot Farid Khan, Shadman Town, Scheme No 2 and Scheme No3.

Residents of Kot Abid Colony and Nai Wala Bangla staged a protest rally against Wapda.