SUKKUR, Dec 17: Earlier than scheduled and prolonged loadshedding that too, on daily basis has made the lives of people of upper Sindh, a hell.
The power generation shortfall spanning from 15 to 18 hours since the 11th day of the current month was quite ahead of Pepco plan which envisaged only 4 to 6 hours of power cut from Dec 20.
Federal Minister for Water and Power Raja Pervaiz Ashraf issued a warning last month to the CEO of power distributing companies to cover line losses and achieve recovery target by Dec 31 and on failure should not report to office, beginning the new year.
Sources in Hesco said that the CEO and officials of the regional control Centre Jamshoro taking the warning seriously embarked on unannounced outages throughout upper Sindh including, Sukkur, Pano Akil, Ghotki, Mirpur Mathelo, Daharki, Ubauro, Thul, Tangwani, Kandhkot, Kashmore, Jacobabad, Shikarpur, Larkana, Khairpur and other cities and towns.
Chief engineer, power, Hesco, Sukkur was tight lipped and refrained from issuing the schedule which otherwise may help people in making their arrangements as per the announcement.
Local grid stations staff when approached shifted the responsibility on to the RCC officers and on contacting them, an officer Jawed said that they had to resort to 12 to 18 hours of loadshedding to overcome the shortage.
When confronted over Pepco’s announcement of 4 to 6 hours of outages because of the closure of canals and reduction of water from Tarbela Dam, Javed diverted the correspondent towards Pepco officials.
A Pepco official, at the Load Management Centre in Islamabad without disclosing his identity, declined to share information with Dawn advising the correspondent to get in touch with the Wapda House, Lahore.
However, on speaking to Power Despatch Centre, Jamshoro, an officer requesting anonymity told this correspondent that the share of generation shortfall for three companies including, Hesco, Mesco and Qesco was 700 megawatts and the director regional control centre, Jamshoro was responsible for equally distributing this shortfall among them.
He said that the director RCC on the behest of chief executive Hesco had made wrong distribution of shortfall by observing 400MW loadshedding in upper Sindh and 300MW between Mesco and Qesco.
Meanwhile, office-bearers of Sukkur Small Traders Association and Sukkur Chambers of Commerce and Industry expressed their fury over 15 to 18 hours of unannounced loadshedding which had the paralysed trade and industry activities.
They demanded a high-level inquiry into such long spells of outages and urged the president, prime minister, federal minister for water and power and chairman Wapda to take notice of high-handedness of Hesco high-ups and rid the people of upper Sindh from the curse of hours-long outages.
Our Hyderabad bureau adds: President Hyderabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry Shafique Qureshi had expressed concern over prolonged unscheduled loadshedding with the demand of bringing back sanity in the whole scenario.
They complained of industrial production and economic activities coming to a halt due to loadshedding. Cost of production was increasing with the business community making payments to labour for unproductive hours, said members of the delegations.
They accused the Hesco officials of inefficiency.
Shafique Qureshi urged Hesco not to resort to unannounced loadshedding.