Lahore - With the rise in temperature, the Lahore Electric Supply Company has increased the duration of power loadshedding, as the shortfall has jumped to more than 800MW.

The consumers of the LESCO are suffering power shutdown of around 4 to 6 hours in urban and rural areas respectively along with continued power tripping in all major localities of Lahore. Officials said that power plants were producing sufficient power and there was no shortfall of power in the country. However the transmission lines were unable to bear the heavy load. Due to which they had to turn off their feeders to avoid a system failure after the increased demand of power. They said that in Lesco total demand for electricity currently stands at 3,850MW while Lesco has an allocated quota of 3960MW, exceeding total demand.

They rejected any scheduled power outages, adding that power outages, if taking place in any area, were due to either overloading or the failure of transformers.

Consumers complained that there has been no respite from power outages even during the holy month of Ramazan. They were facing continuous tripping and breakdowns across the provincial capital even during Sehri and Iftar times. Citizens claim loadshedding is being done under the guise of technical faults, line losses and increase in electricity demand. The affected areas included Sammanabad, Johar Town, Iqbal Town, walled city, Mozang, Garhi Shahu, Model Town, Multan Road areas and Ferozepur road localities.

Consumers from different parts of the city claimed they were facing severe power tripping and short-hour outages on a regular basis. They asked the government to revamp distribution companies along with their transmission lines. Govt shoud upgrade the entire transmission system for smooth power supply.