PESHAWAR: Like other parts of the country, the power breakdown also affected domestic lives in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the guessing game over the cause of massive breakdown continued for the whole day on Sunday.

Electricity could not be restored in many parts of the provincial capital till Sunday evening, which caused severe shortage of water. The miseries faced by the residents of villages located on the outskirts of Peshawar were doubled by power suspension as they were already facing gas loadshedding.

In Peshawar, all localities suddenly plunged into darkness at about midnight on Saturday. It was learnt that the essential facilities such as hospitals and CNG and petrol stations also faced problems while continuously running the diesel-fuelled generators as a backup power supply for many hours.

“The power supply was restored at about 9am on Sunday. Luckily, our hospital has 16 power generators of different capacities to work as backup for about 10 hours,” a spokesman for Lady Reading Hospital told Dawn.

Officials at Khyber Teaching Hospital and Hayatabad Medical Complex also said that diesel-fuelled generators worked as alternative option. They said in case the power supply was suspended for such long hours in summer it would have caused serious problems.

A resident of Garhi Atta Mohammad told this correspondent that electricity was not fully restored till 8am.

According to a spokesman for Peshawar Electric Supply Company, the power supply had been restored in many areas while work was in progress in the remaining . The spokesman said power supply to the hospitals, industries and urban areas had been restored on priority basis.

“Pesco chief executive officer Mohammad Jabbar Khan is personally supervising the power restoration process,” the spokesman said in a statement. The official asked the consumers to avoid misuse of electricity to overcome the problems.

According to residents of different areas, the power supply was restored gradually.

In Mansehra, Torghar, Kolai-Palas, Upper Kohistan and Lower Kohistan, the electricity was restored at about 5pm on Sunday. However, since then the electricity was being suspended frequently, affecting commercial and domestic activities, said consumers in some localities.

In Lakki Marwat, the power supply was restored on Sunday evening. People faced problems as the prolonged power breakdown also caused water shortage in urban and rural localities. They said the breakdown also affected business activities. The people took a sigh of relief when the power supply was restored.

Published in Dawn, January 11th, 2021