While much of the world will be brilliantly lit up for the Christmas Season celebrations in the last few days of the year, areas of Pakistan will be in darkness for about four hours each day as a result of the plan to introduce load shedding across the nation from December 25.
This has been necessitated by the drop in generation of hydel power by 1,200MW expected from Dec 31 to Jan 31.
The province of Punjab and Sind has already alerted Irsa (the Indus River Authority) to the fact that it will be commencing its annual cleaning drive and will therefore not use any of its water for power generation during that period.
This particular time of the year is normally selected for the operation as only a negligible amount of water is required for irrigation at this time compared to any other part of the year, and this water can be provided by the normal rainfall.
As an official pointed out, it is important to maintain the canals in order to assure a trouble free usage of them later on the year.
PEPCO (Pakistan Electric Power Company) has planned the load shedding so that metropolitan areas will be affected for two hours everyday whereas rural areas will go without power for as long as four hours each day.
In the meantime areas such as the Tehkal area in Peshawar that have already been facing load shedding for over a year are up in arms about it. Complaining of load shedding for up to 12 hours a day they claim that their tube wells are no longer serviceable and they face acute water shortages. They allege that local authorities are ignoring the problem and are therefore threatening demonstrations and violence if the matter is not dealt with immediately.
Pakistan is already facing a shortage of power with the demand being up to 10,402MW but the supply just now being only 9,861MW.
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