A midst scorching heat, power outages for prolonged hours are becoming unbearable for common man. Electricity shortfall reportedly crossed six thousand megawatts on Saturday and as a result three to six hours of load shedding is taking place in urban areas while situation in rural areas is far worse where people are experiencing outages of up to twelve to sixteen hours.
Indeed, demand of electricity increases with rise in mercury as people start using air conditioners and other appliances to keep themselves safe from extreme heat. But it is responsibility of the government to fulfil this very requirement of the people. Every now and then, government officials keep telling us that more megawatts have been added to the system yet fact is that whenever summer season sets in, people are faced with this unending problem of load shedding. This does not happen in any other part of the world. Given increase in temperature, we will ask the government to immediately take notice of power outages and take requisite steps to address the situation. It must be ensured that all power plants are in operational mode and if any of them are facing malfunction, fault must be removed immediately. Minister for Power Khurram Dastagir should personally monitor the whole situation, ensuring also there is no unannounced load shedding. It is unfortunate that our system is still not equipped to bear huge load when demand reaches high levels in summer season. Needful should be done to bring improvements in the system. The government must also implement its energy conservation plan to reduce current shortfall. The business community must also cooperate.
