Most towns of Sindh continued to suffer hours' long load shedding contrary to the government's claim on Thursday last that the demand and supply of electricity has now come at par and there will be no more load shedding in country. Some of the areas in Sindh were already exempted from load shedding while the situation eased to the surprise of citizens in a few other areas, according to survey conducted by PPI.
While there was no load shedding in Thatta, the district headquarters town, in the morning of Friday, it later re-started with reduced timings of load shedding. The people of Jati, a coastal town and Tehsil headquarters of same district, complained that load shedding continued as usual. "There is no light at night and again in the day electricity supply is suspended from 8.30 am to 12 noon and again shut by 2.00pm. This way they complete daily shutdown of eight hours," Babu Rahim Bux told from Jati on phone. The people of Gharo town of Thatta district, however, are fortunate that no load shedding happens there for having pumping stations there; these pumps supply water to Karachi. "Gharo is exempted from load shedding by KESC due to pumping stations, but sometimes the area remains without power for two to three days when any fault occurs," Syed Imran Ali told. The neighbouring Badin district headquarters town has also benefit of having no load shedding being the constituency of Speaker National Assembly Dr. Fahmida Mirza. "We had this problem, but since Thursday night there is no load shedding," Latif Zargar said from Badin.
Matli town of Badin district is also exempted from load shedding being the part of constituency of Federal Minister Syed Naveed Qamar, people told adding however that outages occurred due to some faults. This area has also the benefit of power supply from Ansari Sugar Mills, which sells electricity from its own plant to the HESCO. Talhar, another town of Badin district, faced 10 to 12 hours' load shedding as usual. No load shedding on Friday last and then fewer outages were of great surprise to the citizens of Hyderabad, who had become used to eight-hour load shedding but the shutdown continued as usual in Tando Jam, a nearby town. Shahdadkot-Qambar and Larkana districts had to face severe load shedding but the situation improved after government announcement while Naudero, the constituency of MNA Faryal Talpur (Previously of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto), where the President's Camp House is located, is exempted from load shedding. Similar exemption is allowed to Sehwan with hardly one-hour load shedding early in the morning, but that too has been ended since Friday.-PPI