K-P plunges into darkness amid rainfall

Provincial power consumers irked as PESCO complaint cells remain inaccessible

PESHAWAR: Most parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa plunged into darkness late Sunday night as 99 of 267 feeders belonging to Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) tripped following light rain.

Residents of Gulberg, Bara Gate, Cantt, Kohat, Dalazak, Warsak, Landi Arbab in Peshawar and other areas, particularly Charsadda and Bannu district spent the night without electricity in extreme heat.

Pesco Director General Public Relations, Shaukat Afzal, told The Express Tribune that 67 of 99 feeders had been restored while work on the remaining was underway.

Out of the 32 affected feeders, he added, 18 had tripped in Peshawar city, while the rest affected suburban areas of Peshawar.



 

According to consumers, their complaints over the outage were all in vain as Pesco's helpline numbers remained engaged for most of the night. "I tried numerous times to establish contact on two Pesco numbers but they remained busy each time,” a resident of Gulberg Anwar Khan said.

Khan added that his children were extremely perturbed by the outage in extreme weather conditions. When he was finally able to connect to an at around 6am, he was told that company will check the feeders for fault. Anwar Khan termed the incident as 'extremely irresponsible' on Pesco's part, especially considering the distribution company seemed to be unaware of the fault.

Meanwhile, Gulberg’s executive engineer said electricity poles had been dismantled, interrupting power supply to Kohat Road, Cantt and Gulberg.

When asked about the ineffectiveness of complaint cells, Afzal said, “The complaint cells answer the calls, but can't fix faults.” He went on to explain that Pesco had started fixing the feeders as soon as the rain gave way.