New power tariff to darken consumers' nights

It is interesting to note that mostly domestic and commercial users are connected with Wapda lines through three phases.

“Presently, consumers using electricity in day hours are being charged Rs 7 per unit electricity, but now they are being forced to pay Rs 12 to 15 as a punishment for consuming Wapda electricity in the evening,” explained the sources.

Official sources further revealed that govt did not make any announcement formally in this regard.

A Pepco official, when contacted, said that the government was purchasing costly electricity from independent power producers to meet the additional demand of consumers, which has climbed at an average 15,000 MW. He said that government was spending over rupees 60 billion on average to give subsidy on electricity for the consumers. He further said that the subsidy would remain intact to the consumers using only one-phase which is rare.

Meanwhile, citizens continued to suffer power outages of up to 15 hours all around the country as electricity crisis got worse with shortfall enhancing to 4,000 megawatts just in a single day.

Experts said that load-shedding duration would be increased further and added that there was no possibility of improvement until weather got better.

In city 8 to 10 hours’ power outages were reported almost in all residential areas. Loadshedding-hit areas included Samanabad, Model Town, Garden Town, Multan Road, Shahdra, Mozang, Walled City, Ghaziabad, Alfaisal Town, Johar Town, Iqbal Town, Chohang, Mughalpura, Ravi Road and Sabzaar.