Power outages continue in the city

LAHORE: Extended power outages continued in the city on Tuesday for the second consecutive day. Almost all localities in the city suffered equally. The consumers fear that the electricity suspension will continue into the holy month of Ramazan.

A third of the city had faced a continuous five-hour suspension on Monday but Lesco defended the closure saying that there was a technical fault in the main grid station. However, no technical problem was reported on Tuesday, but the city continued to suffer outages. In Township, the electricity was closed for two hours continuously, then restored for one hour only to close for another half hour. Similar experiences were reported from many parts of the city, including Faisal Town, Johar Town, and Iqbal Town.

A senior Lesco official said that the main reason for the increase in power outages is the reduced supply from the national grid. He said this situation was likely to continue as fuel supply to some of Pepco’s power plants has been affected by the floods. The power shortfall for the city has reached 300MW, as the company’s current supply stands at 2,100MW supply while its demand is 2,400MW.

Though the federal government has promised to provide uninterrupted electricity at iftar, sehri and taravih times, many Lesco consumers fear that the company will not be able to deliver on the promise and would simply give excuses for shutting down electricity.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 11^th, 2010.