LAHORE: Lahore has been going dark after sunset for a week. Households in the city report six to eight hours of forced outages a day, and those in surrounding rural areas eight to 16 hours, in a pattern the power company’s own staff blame on a shortage of imported gas.
Dawn reported the outages on Saturday, quoting residents of Johar Town and the area around Thokar Niaz Baig. One said his neighbourhood was losing about eight hours daily even though it is not on a high-loss feeder, the category where electricity theft is common. The supply, he said, had been cutting in and out every hour or half hour, damaging appliances.
Another resident said field staff of the Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO) had stopped answering calls. The districts of Kasur, Okara, Nankana Sahib and Sheikhupura are affected as well.
A company officer, speaking to the The Lahore Times, did not dispute any of it. Lesco was not receiving power in line with demand, he said, and had no option but to shed load.
His account of the daily cycle explains why the city notices it most at night. During the day, rooftop solar panels take a large share of demand off the grid and the gap narrows. When the sun sets, those same consumers switch back to Lesco at once and demand jumps.
The cause of the shortfall, he suggested, was that a couple of gas-fired power plants were not running because cargoes of liquefied natural gas from Qatar had been delayed by the war in the Middle East. Relief would come only when the weather changed.
That link was foreseeable. The Lahore Times reported last month that the Gulf crisis had put winter LNG cargoes at risk, and the city went through a similar spell of load-shedding in late August. Forecasts for the coming week show no rain, so the officer’s one hope is not close.
The outages come with a higher bill attached. Consumers will pay an extra Rs1.11 per unit in October under the fuel adjustment, partly because imported gas made up about 40 percent of the fuel cost in August. One opposition party has already complained of unannounced load-shedding alongside rising tariffs.
Two things remain unexplained. If the shortfall is national, the Power Division has not said how it is being shared between companies. And if it is planned load management, as consumers suspect, no schedule has been published that would let people prepare.
Lesco’s chief executive and spokesperson were not available for comment, source said. The Power Division has not issued a statement.
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