Peshawar faces Major Power Breakdown

PESHAWAR: Power supply to most parts of the city was suspended Thursday for more than 17 hours by the Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) as consumers suffered due to the sweltering heat.

This was the longest power disruption in Peshawar and this is the reason it caused so much agony. People said they weren’t informed about it and that they didn’t expect there could be no electricity for so long. Electricity had not been restored by 10,30 pm though Pesco officials kept saying that it would be restored by Thursday evening. The suspension of power supply started at 7 am.

“This shows unprofessional approach of the power distribution company and its officials. Nothing like this happens in rest of the country to suspend power supply for 16 hours in summer in the name of repair work,” stressed an angry consumer Mohammad Fayyaz, a resident of Peshawar’s Gulberg locality.

Pesco spokesman Shaukat Afzal said power supply was suspended to enable their technical staff to install 40MVA high voltage transformer on the 132 KV grid-station of Kohat Road Industrial Estate. He said the new heavy transformer would help overcome low voltage and power breakdown due to an increase in demand for power consumption.

He said 26 MVA transformer was earlier installed on the grid-station, which could not manage growing demand in power consumption. He said they had to shut down three main power supply lines in the city due to work on the grid-station and provide supply to only one line to operate tubewells and provide drinking water. But he did not know that people had suffered 16 hours long power breakdown. Interestingly, the spokesman said people would have to bear 15 hours more power suspension today (Friday) as work was still going at the grid-station.