No lights during iftar, sehri, taraweeh

LAHORE: Several neighbourhoods in Lahore suffered power cuts during taraweeh, sehri and iftar, despite orders from the prime minister that there be no outages during these times.

On Wednesday, a Pepco spokesman said all power distribution companies had been told to ensure uninterrupted power supply between 3 am and 5 am, and 6:30 pm and 10:30 pm.

But Lesco officials said on Thursday that outages during taraweeh times would continue at mosques that got their power from commercial feeders. Typically, mosques that are located in markets or other commercial areas are supplied by commercial feeders. The officials said around 60 per cent of the city’s feeders were for commercial use but these were also supplying electricity to domestic users in several areas.

“Whenever the electricity supply to commercial feeders is suspended, all connections served from these feeders automatically go off. That is why the power was out on Wednesday night at taraweeh time,” one official said, referring to blackouts in Model Town, Faisal Town, Gulberg, Township, Garden Town, Rehmanpura, Ichra, Mozang and other parts.

Commercial feeders are scheduled for suspension from 3 am to 4 am, 9 am to 10 am, 2 pm to 4 pm, 6 pm to 7 pm and 9 pm to 10 pm every day.

This schedule has not changed with the start of Ramazan and so Lahoris will continue to suffer outages when they start the fast in the morning (3 am-4 am), end it in the evening (around 7 pm) and at night when they offer taraweeh prayers, the officials said.

Citizens demanded that Lesco change the schedule. “The company can cut the power in other hours,” said business executive Abid Mehmood. “These times are very important for Muslims and outages at these hours cause great inconvenience.”

“I was suffocating inside as the air conditioners were not working,” said Moeen Ahmed, who was offering taraweeh prayers at a Johar Town mosque

Lesco carried out unscheduled outages alongside regular power cuts on Thursday for a third consecutive day. In some neighbourhoods, the power was out for one hour after every two hours on, while others received just 30 minutes of electricity for every 90 minutes out. “There is no schedule. All the time is outage time,” said Abdul Qahar, a resident of Gulberg. Javed Khan, Lesco additional director for public relations, said the power shortfall for Lahore was now over 1,000MW. “Looking at the shortfall, the current outages are nothing,” he said, adding that the situation would improve only when the floods end and thermal power plants restart production.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 13^th, 2010.