People Protest as Power Blackout in Peshawar and Surrounding Areas Extends to 14 Hours

The sweltering heat is becoming unbearable for Pakistanis, made worse by the fact that a number of cities are facing severe outages of electricity. Peshawar and the surrounding cities, including Mardan and Nowshera, have been in the dark for at least 14 hours since Monday night.

Earlier, the worsening load-shedding situation in the province had forced the citizens to come out on the roads to protest. In the wake of scorching heat coupled with the distressing situation of the electricity outage, the citizens blocked multiple roads in the metropolis while burning tires as well to protest against the power outages.

The security forces resorted to using tear gas to disperse the angered citizens, however, the stone-pelting by the protesters injured one of the police officers, who was taken to a nearby hospital.

Peshawar Electric Supply Company (PESCO) has denied prolonging the load-shedding duration, explaining that the overloading and illegal connections are the real cause of longer periods of electricity shortage.

Among other cities, the capital Islamabad’s citizens are also facing frequent power outages since Monday night.

The load-shedding situation is deteriorating further with elections drawing nearby and no government to handle the situation. Earlier, the former Finance Minister Miftah Ismail had claimed that there would be no load-shedding in the next seven months. However, the blistering heat in the last couple of weeks has exposed the claims to be false.