Power woes: Gilgit hit by longest loadshedding

Officials say power suspended due to cleaning and maintenance work.

GILGIT: The capital city of the mountain region was hit hard by longest ever power loadshedding on Sunday. The water and power department has adopted yet another approach to irk residents by suspending electricity on Sundays for ‘cleaning and maintenance of machines’.

For the past several weeks, Gilgit has been facing the worst form of power outages on Sundays, due to which people have severely been affected.

According to local people, loadshedding on Sundays started last summer, when the floods swept away several water channels which used to supply water to the machines. The floods also destroyed various hydel power projects in the region.

The local people, realising the cause of the problem, continued to bear with extended power cuts.

However, despite the lapse of one year, the capital city continues to suffer long hours of power outages, while people have started to question the credibility of the department.

“It is strange that the department is using such tactics to carry out loadshedding. I think it is an attempt to cover up for their inefficiencies,” said a businessman Mushtaq Ahmed.

The capital city experienced extreme form of power cuts yesterday (Sunday), when power was suspended at 4am and continued till the filing of this report.

The residents of Gilgit have questioned the pretext used by officials of Public Works Department and urged the chief minister to take concrete steps to deal with the issue.

“The chief minister needs to address this self-created and artificial issue on an immediate basis by taking concrete steps,” said PML-N Gilgit-Baltistan President Hafizur Rehman.

Meanwhile, PWD officials, when contacted, said power will be restored once the cleaning is completed. PWD Executive Engineer Hamid Hussain could not be contacted for comments.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 3^rd, 2011.