Prolonged power outages: Consumers threaten to launch protest in Mansehra

MANSEHRA: The commercial and domestic consumers on Tuesday threatened to launch a protest drive if the current spate of power outages continued in the district.

“The elderly people and children have been falling unconscious because of the prolonged power outages in the city and its suburbs and we will come onto the streets and observe a complete shutter down strike against it if the Peshawar Electric Supply company don’t take remedial measures immediately,” Fayyaz Sulehria, the chairman of central traders’ body, told reporters here.

He said that the Pesco had been suspending electricity to commercial and domestic consumers in the city and its suburbs for the entire alternative day on the plea of trimming branches and maintenance of power supply lines along Karakoram Highway and Abbottabad Road.

“The Pesco officials cannot deceive us in such a way to observe a daylong power outage which will never be tolerated,” said Sulehria. “We had taken the issue of loadshedding with the Pesco high-ups and they had assured us to take remedial measures but to no avail,” he added.

A local, Mohammad Ayub, said that the people settled around King Abdullah Teaching Hospital remained without electricity the entire day on August 6.He said that the Pesco had issued a four-hour a day loadshedding schedule earlier this month but mostly observed daylong blackouts of electricity.