RAWALPINDI: Frequent power cuts have made the lives of citizens miserable by also disrupting water distribution system in the hot and sultry weather.

Though the federal government, led by the PML-N, has claimed to have met the shortfall of 6,000 megawatts across the country, the consumers said the government was unable to resolve the issue.

The frequent outages have not only caused a lot of problems for the residents but also put students taking exams and patients admitted to hospitals in trouble. Moreover, vehicular movement in the city is also disrupted as traffic signals stop working during loadshedding.

Students taking the annual examination of the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) Part-1 and those preparing for the intermediate exams scheduled to be held from June 18 are in great trouble.

The outages have also hit the smooth supply of water in city and cantonment areas as the 320 tubewells, including 480 in the city areas, could not be operated in the absence of electricity.

The residents of the city and cantonment areas were already facing an acute water shortage but the Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) and the Rawalpindi Cantonment Board (RCB) are now blaming the outages for the crisis.

Wasa spokesman Mohammad Umer Farooq said it was difficult for the agency to keep the tubewells running during the unannouncedpoweroutages.

He said there were two tubewells in each union council and to improve the pressure of water, the two tubewells should be turned on at the same time. However, Iesco has given connections to the tubewells of each area from different feeders. Because of different timings of loadshedding, it is difficult for Wasa to turn on the two tubewells at the same time.

He said due to this technical problem, some houses received water and others remained without it. He said the agency had no funds to purchase generators to run the tubewells.

However, he said, Wasa had installed two 50 KV generators each at the Sangjani and Rawal Dam filtration plants.

Naseem Mehmood, a resident of Media Town, said due to the frequent outages he had bought an emergency light worth Rs2,000 and a rechargeable table fan for Rs6,000 to help his son prepare for his examination without disruptions.

He said for middle class families, it would be difficult to purchase an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) system costing Rs50,000 when inflation and rising petrol prices had already hit the citizens hard.

Mohammad Akram, a resident of Ratta Amral, said people had to face water shortage and power outages in the sizzling heat. He said it was the responsibility of the government to ensure uninterrupted supply of electricity to the citizens as it continued increasing power tariffs and received bills without any delay.

When contacted, Iesco officials said there was a shortfall of electricity and to bridge the gab between demand and supply load management was being carried out. They said due to the hot weather the demand had suddenly increased, and expressed the hope that the situation would improve within a few days.

Published in Dawn, June 4th, 2022