Angry protesters take Pesco officials hostage

Source Dawn

The infuriated consumers made three Pesco officials hostage along with their vehicle during a protest demonstration against loadshedding in Sherkot area here on Sunday.

The protesters also blocked Parachinar highway for more than three hours to every kind of traffic. However, they released the officials on the assurance of police that power transformer in the area would be repaired.

Police said that Sherkot people paid three times for repair of a faulty transformer and demanded installation of more transformers.

The protesters complained that Pesco officials were demanding money for repair of the transformer for fourth time. “They refused to repair the transformer when we declined to pay more money to them,” they alleged.

Police assured the protesters that the transformer would be repaired by Pesco and it would try to resolve the problem of low voltage.

In some parts of the city, electricity remained suspended for 20 hours owing to delay in replacement of faulty transformers.

The residents alleged that Pesco had made it a routine to demand hefty amount for repair and replacement of the transformers.

The SDO, when contacted on Saturday night, said that that emergency staff would be available on Sunday replace the transformers. The staff was replacing a transformer in the city and other would be changed on Sunday, he said.The Pesco staff came in the afternoon after 16 hours to Mohallah Sikandar Khan Shaheed to replace the damaged transformer, residents said.

They said they had to suffer in the extreme hot weather while fasting as a result of the delay.

“The Wapda team agreed to take the transformer for repairing and demanded Rs19,000 from us,” they said. However, after intervention of some influential people they promised to bring it back in the evening free of cost. But the transformer was not installed despite lodging several complaints with the said SDO till filing of this report. The transformer developed a fault around 9am on Saturday.

The people, who had generators, spend Rs1,000 on petrol to run them in absence of transformer for such a long time. The problem has caused acute shortage of drinking water in the city.

Sometime back, Pesco staff charged money for repair of a transformer from villagers of Muhammadzai area and even then replaced it after five days.

Earlier, the transformers used to be stocked at divisional headquarters but due to unknown reasons the government decided to dump them at the main workshop in Nowshera.

Now, in case of immediate replacement, officials prefer to repair transformers at a private workshop with consumers’ money instead of sending them to Nowshera as it can take at least three days.

“The politicians have make things worst by making announcements about provision of electricity to the remotest areas of their constituencies to get public support during elections,” consumers said.

They added that Wapda had installed poles and hundreds of new transformers but it could hardly provide electricity owing to power shortfall.