ISLAMABAD: Low voltage and load management of electricity have become a routine in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, but Islamabad Electric Supply Company (Iesco) denies there is hardly any load management issue in the region from Attock to Jhelum.

However, the power distribution company agreed that low voltage issue occurs as people used more electricity than the transformers capacity but whenever they received any complaint about low voltage they increased the frequency of voltage.

Residents of G-9, Satellite Town, Shah Khalid Colony, Faisal Colony and other areas have been facing power outages and low voltage for the last over one month.

Sohail Jameel, a Rawalpindi resident, while talking to Dawn said load management had added to their miseries in this hot and humid weather. “Our electricity appliances have become out of order due to low electricity voltage,” he said.

Maqbool Ahmed, who runs a workshop having welding plants, said for the last few years government had been claiming they had much electricity in the country but load management belied their claim.

“People like me cannot run their businesses due to power outages. I cannot afford electricity through generators. I appeal to the government to ensure uninterrupted electricity supply to the business community,” he said.

Iesco media coordinator Raja Asim, while talking to Dawn, said they carried out load management when electricity demand increases in hot weather.

“We have been getting electricity quota as per our requirements. On July11, we got 60 mega watts (MW) less than the demand due to which we carried out load management in some areas. On July12, we received 10MW more than the requirement of 1900MWso we did not opt for load management on Monday,” he said.

However, sometimes the electricity requirement increased due to hot weather, in this case load management is the only option, he said.

With regard to low voltage he said whenever they got complaints, they increased the frequency of voltage.

He, however, claimed that there was no issue of low electricity voltage in most of the region.

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2021