Protracted power cuts perturb Kabul residents

KABUL (Pajhwok): Residents of some areas in capital Kabul are complaining against lengthy electricity outages and accuse Da Afghanistan Breshana Shirkat (DABS) of unfair load-shedding.

Pajhwok Afghan News reporter conducted interviews with residents of Kabul in different areas and most of them said the power cuts lasted four hours during day time to 12 hours in 24 hours while others said they witnessed up to 10 hours of electricity suspension day and night.

Zarghona Roshan, a resident of Kart-i-Chahar area, said load-shedding hours had increased in their locality from the past three days.

“On the Independence Day, we thought government offices are shut and there will be no outages, but the same day electricity went off from 5:00am in the morning and returned at 1:00pm and again it went off at 3:00pm till 7:00pm. We hardly have up to 10 hrs of electricity in 24 hours.”

Ahmad Farshad, a resident of Da Afghanan locality, complained against excessive electricity outage and said from dawn to dust there was electricity outage continuously in recent days. “We live in central Kabul and face worst electricity outage during the day,” he remarked.

Laila, a resident of Pul-i-Padsha area, said they suffered due to prolonged load-shedding in recent days. He said the outages were not properly regulated as some areas had no electricity for several hours and other areas were treated justly.

Meanwhile, DABS spokesman Wahidullah Tawhidi linked the protracted outages to increase in number of consumers and electricity consumption. He said currently demand for electricity in Kabul stood at 750MW while the available power was 450MW.

He said DABS was working on a proper load-shedding schedule which would be shared with people from the start of new solar month.

Nh/ma