Peshawar residents fume over massive power cuts

PESHAWAR: Electricity consumers in several areas of the provincial metropolis have complained of hardships due to unscheduled load-shedding and massive power cuts which have reached 12 hours.

Starting at early morning, power suspension for one-hour duration at every alternate hour continued the entire day on Wednesday, putting the consumers in trouble. Although power cut off has become a routine, especially for domestic consumers in rural areas of the province, such an unprecedented load-shedding in urban localities of the provincial capital and that too without any schedule, has no match in the past.

The Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) did not even bother to inform the consumers about the outages schedule. It is thus clearly violating the Peshawar High Court (PHC)’s recent verdict, as it rather increased the load-shedding duration after the verdict. The Pesco, unlike the past, has no complaint centres or cell and consumers have no knowledge of where to lodge a complaint or inquire about the reason behind the power suspension for hours.

Gulberg, a locality where the majority of the residents belonging to business or salaried middle-class pay power bills regularly and power theft is next to nil, seems to be the worst sufferer of the load-shedding.

Residents of the area told The News that the Pesco way of punishing the consumers was forcing them to turn to the streets in protest. They said though there has been power shortage for the last several years, the situation worsened during the last two years of the incumbent set-up.

The residents said the consumers had the option to file a contempt of court petition in the PHC against the Pesco for ignoring its verdict and carrying out unprecedented load-shedding in the locality.

They complained that on the one hand, consumers had been facing power cut-off while on the other Pesco was squeezing the poor by increasing the tariff manifold. Consumers said they were being fleeced through different slabs, which is unjustified.

The residents of Dilazak Road also complained of excessive power cuts and said that during the last couple of days, the duration of load-shedding had been increased despite the fact that temperature had come down and electricity use, especially that of air-conditioners, had almost stopped.