Power outages of up to 20 hours per day continued in parts of the city on Saturday, as the supply fell below 50 per cent of demand and temperatures soared to near 50 degrees Celsius.
A spokesperson for the Lahore Electric Supply Company said that demand stood at around 4,500 MW while the company was only getting 2,200 MW from the national grid, leaving a shortfall of 2,300 MW. “With the shortfall at more than 50 per cent of demand, it is hard to manage things and keep load shedding on schedule,” he said.
While parts of the city have been getting one hour of electricity for each hour without, some areas have suffered continuous outages of three to four hours and up to 20 hours of electricity a day, particularly rural areas. Businesses are also hurting due to the lengthy outages while richer neighbourhoods didn’t escape the load shedding either.
“I could not have imagined there would be 20 hours of load shedding in Lahore and that too in posh areas,” said Shahid Ali, a resident of Cantonment. “The days are miserable and the nights are restless. My children are affected, as is my office. I hope the new government can change things. I know they can’t finish load shedding at once but they could at least make it more bearable,” Ali said.
Students at Punjab University held a protest against power outages. “The university hostels have an independent feeder for uninterrupted power supply, but there has been no electricity in the hostels for the last 18 hours,” said Hassan Raza, a student. “The rooms are too hot for studies.”
The national shortfall is still around 7,000 MW, as generation stand at 9,500 MW and demand at over 16,000 MW. Experts warn there could be even longer power outages in the near future due to the non availability of oil for independent power plants unless the government acts.
These power plants need 32,000 tonnes of oil a day to operate at full capacity, but currently receive less then 20,000 tonnes.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 26th, 2013.