Pakistan: Power outages, water shortages add to people's woes in Rawalpindi

Rawalpindi [Pakistan], July 7 : Amid the hot and humid weather in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, the residents are facing power outages of two to three hours, adding to their woes. Due to the power outages, the residents are also facing water shortage problems, the Dawn reported.
Dr Amjad Khan, Chief Executive Officer of the Islamabad Electric Supply Company (Iesco), informed that the company had switched off the main supply line of the area to repair the overloaded transformers that had malfunctioned.
Khan said, "Overloaded transformers go out of order and repair takes time. "To repair the fault, Iesco switched off the main supply line of the area."
The official further informed, "In some areas, Iesco was upgrading the system and it had to stop the supply. There is no load shedding in any part of the city and cantonment area," according to Dawn.
The power outage has also disrupted the water supply amid the heatwave. The power outage has disrupted the working of 320 tubewells including 260 tubewells in the city and 60 in the cantonment area.
Amid the power cuts, the civic authorities asserted that the timetable of tube wells and filtration plants had been disturbed. The officials informed that the major complaint received by the cantonment and Wasa authorities included low pressure of water supply.
Rawalpindi Cantonment Traders Association Secretary General Zafar Qadri said that there was no load-shedding but Iesco had shut down the electricity for the repair work, Dawn reported.
Qadri informed that frequent power cuts disrupted business activities, as machinery would take two hours to restart each time it shut down.
Blaming the government for its wrong policies and imposition of taxes on utility bills, Qadri said that the purchasing power of the people had weakened and the work of the business community went down, Dawn reported.
Notably, Sindh Energy Minister, Syed Nasir Hussain Shah, had said on July 4 that load shedding in Karachi would be lowered by K-Electric in the next few days, ARY News reported.
The minister had stated that K-Electric was attempting to reduce load-shedding timing, particularly during night and peak hours in the hot day to provide relief to the people.
An agreement was signed by CEOs of K-Electric Monis Abdullah Alvi, NSCL Zaigham Adil Rizvi, and STDC (Sindh Transmission and Dispatch Company), Muhammad Salim Shaikh to construct a 40-megawatt power transmission line from Pipri Grid Station to NSCL, which is situated at Port Qasim Authority, as per ARY News.