Advent of summer adds to misery of Hyderabad residents

Urban and rural areas face 10- and 16-hour-long power cuts, respectively

HYDERABAD: The extended hours of power suspension meted out to a staggering number of consumers by the Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (Hesco) have coincided with the onset of summer season, making lives miserable.

Residents of urban areas complain of up to 10-hour-long closures in a day. Those living in rural areas claim to be suffering for up to 16 hours without electricity.

The recurrent suspension of the electric supply affects traders, industrialists, students and ordinary people alike.



"With the winter gone, it seems that the time for our business is over for now," bemoaned Irfan Qureshi, a Qasimabad-based tailor, who claimed that they have been unable to deliver even half of the orders during the last two weeks. According to him, between four to six hours of load-shedding during work hours is being carried out in the area.

Hashim Ali, a dry cleaner based in Tando Adam town of Sanghar district, also shares similar woes. For him, work suffers because they could not power the laundry machines and irons.

"The people in urban areas suffer but we [in the rural areas] are crushed," he grumbled, claiming that up to 14 hours of outages are forced on the town.



Although Hyderabad is categorised among the urban consumers, the citizens complain of facing six to nine hours of power supply suspension. Recently, Hyderabad Municipal Corporation Mayor Syed Tayyab Hussain appealed to Hesco to avoid the supply suspension in the morning and evening hours for the sake of students appearing in Matric exams being conducted by Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) Hyderabad. The request has so far remained unheard.

According to Hesco's spokesperson, Sadiq Kubar, the load management schedule of four to five hours in the urban areas and eight hours in the rural is being implemented. Additionally, areas with recovery of 50% or less are facing extra hours of outages, he added.

"We will do eight hours, 10 hours, 14 hours and even 18 hours load-shedding in the areas where there is high theft of power and low recovery," announced the federal minister, Abid Sher Ali, during a press conference in Hyderabad on Wednesday.



He claimed that almost 40%, or 163 out of 461, of the electric feeders of Hesco have less than 50% recovery, tacitly suggesting that these areas will face long hours of loadshedding.

Hesco is dealing with 32% shortfall between the demand and supply. Against the requirement of 780 megawatts to power 13 districts of Sindh, the national grid is providing 530 megawatts. Although the minister said that the country’s power generation is dealing with a 25% shortage of power – around 12,000 megawatts are being generated against the demand of 16,000 megawatts – he did not explain why 32% shortfall has been imposed on Hesco.