No ‘power’: ‘Better on streets than at home’

Protesters say they can no longer tolerate FESCO’s apathy.

FAISALABAD:

Hundreds of people expressed their frustration and anguish on Sunday over long hours of loadshedding by the Faisalabad Electric Supply Company (Fesco).

The protesters from various localities gathered at the main road leading to Jhang and blocked with burning tyres. The road remained blocked for more than five hours and traffic moving towards Jhang, Gojra, Toba Tek Singh, Kamalia, DI Khan, DG Khan, Bhakkar, Layyah, Chowk Azam, Shorkot, Pir Mehal, Athara Hazari, Bahawalpur and Multan remained suspended.

The protesters chanted slogans against the government as well as Fesco authorities saying that 18 to 20 hours of loadshedding had greatly affected their lives. There were men, children and women, some of them holding household utensils and sticks and others held placards with anti-Fesco slogans.

The demonstrators vowed to stage such protests daily saying staying home was no better than sitting on the streets in the scorching sun.

“Due to no electricity most hours of the day, our daily routine activities have been paralysed,” Madiha Asghar, a housewife from Ayub Colony said. Registering her annoyance at the “unaffected” attitude of the Fesco authorities, she said the Fesco authorities probably had no idea how difficult it had come to do even the little house chores as wash and press clothes. She said people had become helpless.

Ghulam Fareed from Partap Nagar, a retired school teacher, said the incessant loadshedding had started to affect people psychologically.

‘Whether at work, at schools or at home, people are frustrated,” he said.

He said if this schedule continued for some more months, the entire nation would flare up leading to civil disobedience in the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 28^th, 2012.