LAHORE: Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) Ch Muhammad Amin said on Wednesday that the company has started load management for three and a half hours in the city on the direction of Prime Minister and the ministry of power division.

According to him, the demand for electricity has gone through the roof due to skyrocketing heat wave in the city and the present demand for electricity is 5,487 megawatt in the Lesco region.

He said the company has devised a well thought out load management plan for the facility of consumers and the company was observing three and a half hours load shedding as per the instructions of the Prime Minister.

He urged the consumers to avoid unnecessary use of electricity and assured of reducing the duration of load shedding soon after an increase in the supply of electricity.

However, the consumers have expressed serious doubts about the intention of Lesco management, saying that frequent tripping on multiple feeders has proved a problem out of the control of the management. They said power supply faces serious problems during the wee hours on every second feeder in the city.

It may be noted that the federal government had announced a day earlier to reduce the load shedding of electricity from Tuesday onwards to three and a half hours, assuring the nation that the load shedding will further reduce in July as the production of coal plants is increased.

The former premier Shahid Khaqan Abbasi had told a presser that the load shedding will be reduced to three and a half hours and it will also be less than three hours from June 16. He further stated that the government will reduce the load shedding to one and a half to two hours only from June 30, and will be able to further reduce load shedding in July.

It may be noted that the country’s electricity demand has exceeded 25,000MW during the summer. The electricity generation capacity was at 17,000MW which was increased to more than 21,000MW over the past three weeks.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022