PESHAWAR: Power supply remained suspended for several hours here on Sunday, troubling consumers in various localities of the provincial metropolis.

According to residents, the power supply remained suspended in the University Town, Hayatabad, Bara Gate Ring Road and Achini areas for many hours. Similarly, residents of different localities along GT Road, including Hashtnagri and Nishtarabad, complained that they had been enduring prolonged suspensions for the past over five months.

They claimed said that they had been subjected to loadshedding daily from 9:00am to 3:00pm with exception of Friday and Sunday. The outages, they said, had made the lives of people miserable as they had no alternative to meet their routine requirements.

“We have requested the Pesco officials to ensure smooth power supply to the commercial areas as the people are paying utility bills regularly, but to no avail,” said Malik Mehr Ilahi, president of Anjuman-i-Tajiran, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

He said that people living on both sides of GT Road in Hashtnagri, Sikandarpura, Gulshan Bazaar, Garhi Khana, Karimpura and other commercial areas were the worst affected. He said that in case of power outages the people working on different machines had to sit idle for many hours daily.

He said that they had requested the Pesco officials to link the commercial areas with Gulbahar grid station to ensure smooth supply.

He said that the commercial areas where the consumers were paying monthly bills had been linked to the rural areas where complaints of power theft were common.

However, Pesco spokesman Shaukat Afzal said that power supply to some localities, including University Town, Hayatabad Phase-III and Achini was disrupted due to a fault which was rectified within two hours.

He said that it was a routine fault and there was no major breakdown. He insisted that the power supply remained suspended only for a few minutes as the supply was managed from alternative supply line.

About power outages at GT Road, the spokesman said the issue had been created due to ongoing work on Bus Rapid Transit, but it would end by current month.

He said that the Pesco staff was daily shifting the supply line, but sometimes work was delayed due to changes in the BRT design.

“We want to complete the shifting work with minimum power suspension,” he said, adding loadshedding duration had been reduced as per decision of the federal government.

Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2018