Lights out: Traders protest against prolonged outages

Giving ultimatum to WAPDA, threaten to besiege grid stations .

MUZAFFARABAD:

Traders of Madina Market, the city’s commercial hub, took out a protest rally against what they termed unscheduled load-shedding on Friday. The protesters, who had assembled on the call of the traders joint committee, shouted slogans against the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) and the electricity department of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) government.

“AJK generates more than 1,200 megawatts (MW) of electricity while our need is only 300MW. Yet we are not even supplied that amount, which is a grave injustice to us,” said the committee’s president Raja Razzaq Khan. Terming 12 to 15 hours of power outages in Ramazan unacceptable for residents in Ramazan, he threatened that in case Wapda failed to end unscheduled load-shedding within 72 hours in the region, they will besiege grid stations and stage a sit-in in front of the AJK Prime Minister’s Secretariat till their demands are met.

For the past week, load-shedding has made life miserable for city dwellers as well as villagers, as 15 to 20 hours of load-shedding is being carried out in the rural areas. The same day, residents of Jhelum Valley blocked the Quaid-e-Azam Road which links Muzaffarabad with Chakothi for more than an hour to record their protest against power outages.

Following the intervention of the local administration, the road was opened for vehicular traffic and the protesters dispersed peacefully. According to government officials, the peak electricity shortfall these days is almost 24,000MW whereas power generation stands at around 15,000MW.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 13^th, 2014.