Summer loadshedding: Traders protest on Main Boulevard

‘Only three hours of electricity on Friday, two-and-a-half on Saturday’.

LAHORE:

Electricity loadshedding brought traders on to Gulberg’s Main Boulevard on Monday in a protest against the federal government. The road was blocked for several hours as the protesters burnt tyres to vent their frustration.

At around 2 pm, two to three hundred protesters took to the roads and camped in front of Hafeez Centre. The sit-in lasted for close to two hours after which the protesters marched towards Liberty Roundabout. The protesters raised placards and chanted slogans against the federal government while demanding an end to the unscheduled hours of loadshedding.

Traders from Hafeez Centre, Ijaz Centre, Gulberg Centre, Pace and Fazal Centre protested against the loadshedding. Traders alleged that there had been only three hours of electricity on Friday while on Saturday they had only two-and-a-half hours of electricity. They said the lack of electricity had lead to losses of millions of rupees per day.

Shop owner Chand Ashiq showed his ire in a unique way. He set a display of computers on a cart which he parked along side the protest. He said that if the government continued ignoring their needs then other traders would be forced to hawk their wares much in the manner he had resorted to. He said the protesters had reached a point where they could not afford any further financial losses and their fiscal future looked bleak.

Hafeez Centre Union president Malik Kaleem said the government needs to put an end to the ‘drone attacks’ of unscheduled gas and electricity loadshedding. The government, he said, should not forget that they had brought them into power.

“We came out on the road for the restoration of the chief justice. This is our prize after struggling for the democratic system?” Kaleem said. The protests, the union president, said would continue till the government issued a loadshedding schedule. These conditions are intolerable and the government is forcing people to commit suicide, he added.

Muqadas Kazmi, a member of the Hafeez Centre Union, told The Express Tribune that around 4,000 families depended on the businesses running in Hafeez Centre. He said the protest was not a display of strength, rather the bleak scenario had pushed them on to the streets. He said that if the government did not listen they would have no option but to continue their protests. The protests, he said, could also lead to civil disobedience. Kazmi said in such a case the situation would soon spiral out of the government’s control. He added that a further line of action would be formulated once the traders met with the SDO and the XEN on Monday evening.Naveed Ahmad, owner of Pak Aim Technology in Hafeez Centre, said that last summer the government had provided the traders with a proper schedule of loadshedding. He said the electricity was absent from the hours of 11 am to 12 pm and them from 2 pm to 4 pm. There was no other loadshedding, he said. He said it was better to go down fighting rather than being a sitting duck and get financially slaughtered. Ahmad said customers were avoiding the market due to the heat. He added that thieves had now an ideal opportunity to prey on traders who lacked generators.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 26^th, 2011.