Prolonged outages: Pano Aqil residents block National Highway

The residents of Pano Aqil tehsil took to the streets Sunday against prolonged load-shedding, blocking the National Highway for traffic. According to the protesters, they were facing 18 to 20 hours long outages but the officials of Sukkur's power utility, Sukkur Electric Power Company (SEPCO), were not lending an ear to their complaints.
Instead of solving power issues Sepco officials were busy asking for bribe to fix a transformer that has been lying dysfunctional since the past few days, the protesters alleged. However, Sepco officials said duration of load-shedding in Pano Aqil tehsil of Sukkur district was eight hours. They added only those areas were facing prolonged outages were line losses were greater.
During Sunday's protest, locals not only demonstrated on the National Highway but also blocked it for traffic by placing uprooted trees on both sides of the road near Sangi. The protest resulted in long queues of vehicles waiting on the thoroughfare.
Besides Sukkur, prolonged outages have continued to plague Karachi as well, which authorities said have been caused by faults in Bin Qasim Power Plant, responsible to supply electricity to the city. The metropolis is faced with a shortfall of 600MW-700MW due to the power plant breakdown, leading to unannounced load-shedding in the areas that were previously exempted from power outages.