18-hour long outage makes life miserable in Peshawar

PESCO authorities have resorted to unprecedented and intolerable exercise of carrying out 18 hours electricity load shedding on Warsak Road of Peshawar, making life miserable for the residents of the area. According to the residents of Warsak Road, a sudden and unannounced load shedding that started couple of days ago has left people in state of distress and dejection.
"As the weather has started to change from winter to summer, long hours load shedding has also begun; people are starting to wonder when its just the start of summer and the long hours load-shedding has already begun then what would happen when the summer actually kicks in and gets to its peak," said Muhammad Zubair, a resident of Warsak Road.
He said majority of residents of Warsak Road pay their electricity bills on time despite that such a treatment with the residents was unfair, improper and could not be understood.
Electricity generators and UPS have also gone out of order because of hours long load shedding, forcing people to spend time in dark and without a fan, Zubair added. Apart from domestic consumers, commercial users are also suffering a lot due to financial loses.
"Our freezers defrost due to long hours power-cut which make items like meat, poultry and ice cream rot and melt and in turn not suitable for human consumption," said Shafiq Ahmad, a salesman at Seven Super store on main Warsak road.
Meanwhile, elected representatives including Naib Nazim, Habib Shah, Nazim Jamil Khan and Nazim, Gohar Ali Khan have expressed serious concerns over this practice of long hours load shedding in an area where around 100 percent of consumers pay electricity bills on time.
They demanded of Chief Executive PESCO to take notice of this practice and direct the concerned authorities to bring the duration of load shedding to acceptable level.
The Director General Media PESCO, Shaukat Afzal when contacted attributed power disruption to maintenance work.
Chief Executive PESCO has issued directives for rectification of all faults on emergency basis before start of peak summer season and for this purpose load shedding is being carried out for few days, Shaukat explained.
It merits a mention here that there are a lot of schools and colleges besides student hostels on Warsak Road and such an abnormal electricity disruption is severely affecting their studies.