Staff Reporter
The long-duration power outages continued to hit the citizens amid extremely hot weather conditions have left people the citizens at the mercy of pitiless heat-wave.
Unannounced loadshedding continued in different areas of Lahore till late at night. In a temperature of 43 Celsius, many people were hit by heatstroke.
Lesco’s Fateh Garh grid station went out of order due to a technical fault, leaving all feeders overloaded. The power supply from Amir Town, Haider Karar and Eidgah feeders was suspended.
Sources said supply was halted due to a technical fault in high tension cables. Yesterday power supply was stopped for 12 hours when cables went out of order.
Sources said that faults were being developed due to overloading on feeders. All feeders in Fateh Garh are facing a load of over 400 amperes. The XEN Mughalpura said that cables were being tested and soon the power supply would be restored.
In some areas the power outages were of hours long. In Lakhshami Chowk, Bidon Road, Sabzazar, Marghazar Colony, Al Hafiz Town, Awan Town, Township, Raiwind, Amir Town, Harbanspura, Taj Bagh and other areas were hit hard by loadsheddibng.
Apart from Lahore, almost all cities in Punjab are facing undeclared loadshedding. Narowal city was hit by power outage after every hour. In city areas, 12 hours long loadshedding is continued whereas the duration in rural areas is 16 hours.
In Kharian in Upper Punjab, citizens and trader community staged a protest. They blocked GT Road in front of Model Bazar causing a traffic snarl in the area.
The commuters were stuck in the traffic for hours in severe heat. The protesters said that on their persistent demands, Wapda replaced their locality’s faulty transformers four days ago, but it still was not supplying power to their area.
According to sources in power division, the electricity shortfall is 3,500 megawatt. The total production of electricity is 21,200MW while demand is 25,000MW. 4,000MW power is being generated through hydropower sources while government owned thermal power plant is producing 3,200MW electricity.
The private sector is contributing 14,000MW electricity whereas loadshedding up to 6 hours is being carried out across the country.
