Despite surplus power, Chitral hit hard by outages

By Gul Hamaad Farooqi

CHITRAL: Hopes of Chitral town residents to get rid of outages in the scorching heat have dashed to the ground despite production of surplus electricity at the newly-opened Golen Gol  hydel power station. This is mainly because of the failure of the power distribution companies in repairing the transmission lines of the now damaged Reshun powerhouse and other lines of WAPDA. Though phase one of the 108 megawatt Golen powerhouse is operational the electricity remains unutilized.

People of Chitral town have held a number of protests and asked the government to bring the available electricity to use but to no avail. This has added to the suffering of the consumers in the scorching heat when they are fasting in the holy month of Ramazan.

As electronic equipment such as refrigerators and fridges could not keep working in the absence of regular power supply, people are seen buying ice from trucks arriving from different parts of the mountainous valley, including Lowari Pass and Terichmir mountain. The buyers said even after the opening of the Golen Gol powerhouse the end to their electricity-related issues was not in sight and they still mostly depended on natural ice for use in their houses