Tariq Saeed Peshawar
With the unscheduled and unannounced long hours of power outage in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa getting beyond endurance of the masses, the Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur Friday warned the Shehbaz Sharif-led federal government take the issue seriously and reduce the load shedding for KP before things could get out of control and people take the things in their hand,
In fact the temperatures rising across the country as climate change shows its effects, power cuts have become frequent and longer in most of the areas of the KP where the load-shedding have crossed even 12 hours a day thus leading to violent protest leading and even storming into the Grid stations by the frustrated people.
Even the fire brand Chief Minister Gandapur of PTI had resorted to the same move on the third day of EidulAzha himself, following the footsteps of his party’s lawmakers.
CM Gandapur chaired a meeting on load-shedding Friday where he was informed about the latest situation of power cuts, recovery of power distribution companies, and other matters related to the energy sector.
In the briefing, the chief minister was informed that Rs1 billion was recovered in one month with the support of the KP government, while security was provided to the Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) staffers and its facilities.
The meeting was informed that the distribution company had promised that no power cuts would take place during EidulAzha, but it mercilessly failed to honor its commitment. Even during the Eid holidays, 12 to 18 hours of load-shedding was reported out in most of the areas.
Due to the power outages, 81 protests against unannounced load-shedding have been held since May 1, in which women also participated, the chief minister was told.
On this occasion Gandapur lamented that despite full cooperation of the provincial government to solve the problems related to electricity amicably there appear to be no signs of the cooperation on part of the federal government that controls the Power distribution and the things were getting worse.
