LAHORE – Electricity loadshedding and severe low gas pressure hit the Lahorites badly on Sunday.
Unavailability of both the essential commodities resulted deficient water supply in major portion of the City while the domestic consumers could not prepare food at homes.
Although the rain compelled the majority of Lahorites to stay indoor on holiday, but the situation was not ideal at homes due to almost total absence of gas and electricity.
Residents complained that their lives had been turned into hell due to 12 to 14 hours power shutdown besides scarcity of gas had become a major problems for them. Areas of Johar Town, Allama Iqbal Town, Gulshan-e-Ravi, Walled City, Mozang, Muslim Town, Green Town, Town Ship, Shahdra, Bhaghban Pura, Mughal Pura, Ghari Shahu and others witnessed above 12 hours power shutdown and low pressure of gas. A resident of Mozang area said the Lahorites and the people across the country had been protesting against the energy crisis but the government had not been paying heed to their sufferings.
The Lahore Electric Supply Company on Sunday conducted two to three hours persisting spells of outages in its limits. It was learnt that the LESCO had been facilitating VIP grids with less than four-hour outages while the grid stations located in underdeveloped areas were under the grip of 12 to 14 hours blackout.
A LESCO officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the reason behind the horrible loadshedding said: “National Grid is facing almost 6,000MW shortfall and the government has failed to provide fuel to power plants. Power plants are generating less than 50 per cent of electricity from their capacity due to shortages of fuel and gas while the hydel generation is almost negligible.”  In this situation, official said, the LESCO had been getting less than 60 per cent electricity of its demand from the National Grid and resultantly it had to conduct long loadshedding spells in its limit.
Reportedly, unscheduled loadshedding in other areas of the country had been creating lot of resentment and added to the miseries of poor masses. Urban and rural areas of the country were witnessing 12-16 hour loadshedding daily. Rural areas of South Punjab, interior Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber PK were under the grip of more than 18 hours shutdown.
On the other side, Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited, responsible to ensure gas supply to its domestic consumers in all circumstances, failed to manage proper gas supply for domestic consumers. An official of the SNGPL told this scribe that the Company had been facing above 1,000 million cubic feet per day (MMCFD) shortfall of gas in its limit. It was difficult for the SNGPL to meet the surging demand of the domestic gas users in current cold spell, added the official. According to the official, CNG stations in Lahore were also opened which were the main reason of low pressure for domestic sector.