Load-shedding: Court seeks reports on mitigation measures

'Punjab is being discriminated against'.

LAHORE:

The chief justice of the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday sought a report from the Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) chief executive and the Ministries for finance and petroleum till June 4 on a petition challenging excessive electricity load shedding.

The chief justice asked Lesco to inform the court at the next hearing about the steps it had taken to control electricity theft and load shedding.

He also sought a report from ministries for petroleum and finance about alleged non-payment of Rs127 billion to Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco).

The petitioner’s counsel, Advocate Azhar Siddique, had submitted that electricity load shedding had increased manifold despite the court’s order to reduce it.

He said the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) had turned a Rs19 billion profit but the Pepco had reported a Rs600 billion deficit. Siddique said there were massive power outages in the Punjab because the province was getting less than its share of electricity. He said the Punjab was being discriminated against as power theft and default on payment of dues were worse in other provinces.

He said public hospitals were nominally exempted from power outages but three patients had died last month on account of load shedding.

The petitioner said Bahria Town Housing Society, Lahore, had been exempted from load shedding in violation of Articles 9 and 25 of the Constitution.

Siddique said at previous hearings, the court had directed the federal government and Pepco to carry out equal load shedding across the country but the orders had been ignored.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 29^th, 2013.