KOHAT: The long intervals of power breakdowns, unscheduled loadshedding and regular fluctuations have forced the residents to turn to natural springs to beat the heat.

The locals have been bearing the brunt of power breakdowns since two major fires struck the main 132KV grid station on Rawalpindi Road earlier this month.

The springs in the city, Bona Baba and Chillibagh have been witnessing rush of people, even during the nights. The fires had erupted on July 12 and July 14.

The second blaze burnt the feeders replaced after the first one.

It had taken the Pesco staff a week to restore partial electricity to the whole of Kohat.

But since then the consumers have been subjected to six hours outages in both the urban and in the rural localities.

In villages on Hangu Road, Shakardarra and Jarma the load management is more than 14 hours in the sizzling heat.

Meanwhile, sources at the grid station revealed that if the problem was to be fixed once and for all, a 48-hour power shutdown was required to replace the burnt City-II feeder.

They said Pesco had transferred the load of City-III feeder to that City-V to keep the system running and saving it from burning again.

The sources said the City-III feeder was already overloaded.

They said that due to an overloaded system they could not release 220 volts of electricity and it was their compulsion to keep it at 70 volts in some urban and rural areas.

Published in Dawn, August 1st, 2020