KOHAT: With the start of summer the Peshawar Electric Supply Company has started resorting to prolonged outages in urban and rural areas against its schedule announced a week ago.

The Pesco is suspending electricity supply for two hours after every one hour. In urban localities where Wapda has announced maximum loadshedding of six hours in summer it was being carried out for 14 hours. Similarly, in rural areas where it had scheduled eight-hour loadshedding, the power distribution company has been resorting to 18-hour outages.

The consumers who regularly pay their bills say that they should not be punished for the line losses in other areas. For the last one week power supply was being suspended from 6:00pm to 9:00pm and then from 10:30pm to 12:00am.

Besides frequent fluctuations in power supply have rendered many electronic gadgets useless for the consumers, while in KDA people suffered heavily when the power suddenly jumped to 300 volts from 180 volts a few days ago.

When contacted, an official at Pesco, Kohat division, told this correspondent that the grids were not under their control, but under a separate department. He said that the central control room directed them to stop or restore electricity supply in view of the load. He said that they were under strict orders to cut off power supply for long hours to areas where there was theft or nonpayment of dues.

KUST POLLS: The Kohat University of Science and Technology (Kust) has declared the results of elections to its senate, syndicate and academic council for next three years.

Assistant Prof Wali Khan and lecturer Ayaz were elected to the varsity’s senate, while assistant prof Shamim, lecturer Shoaib and assistant director finance were declared successful for the syndicate. Similarly, for positions in academic council, lecturers Waheed and Majid were announced as winners.

Published in Dawn, May 1st, 2016