PESHAWAR: Power protests rocked the provincial capital on Friday as residents of Tehkal blocked the University Road for several hours, while protesters elsewhere forcibly entered two grid stations and restarted feeders undergoing scheduled loadshedding.

The protesters claimed Peshawar Electric Supply Company was carrying outhours long outages in their area.

The closure of city`s main thoroughfare threw the traffic in the tailspin and heaped misery on the motorists.

Fayyaz Khalil, a ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf worker and the organiser of the protest, told Dawn that the billing ratio on the Tehkal-I feeder, which was located along the University Road, stood at 93 per cent.

However, he said the residents were subjected to 14 hours loadshedding a day, while three other feeders in the same area with lesser recovery were facing 12 hours outage a day.

Mr Khalil said he had held several rounds of talks with the Pesco officials to reduce the loadshedding on the feeder to 12hours, but to no avail.

He said they ended the protest after assurances by the Pesco officials to reduce the loadshedding duration.

Dr Naumanul Haq, a local resident, told Dawn that he was stuck on the University Road for around two hours. `The protest caused a massive traffic jam, and people were stranded in their cars, suffering through the intense heat. I saw families with children and elderly individuals struggling to cope with the situation,` Nauman said.

On the otherhand,Pescoin a statement said forcible entries by protesters inside the public utility installations were going on unabated. `The intrusion of protesters inside power installa-tions and forcible restarting of the feeders has become a routine,` it said.

The public utility said on Friday, protesters barged inside the Mattani and Dalazk grid stations and forcibly restarted feeders undergoing loadshedding. It said in Mattani area, a political worker, identified as Dildar Khan, led the protesters inside the grid station. It said the feeder in question was facinglossesup to 85.5 per cent.

Besides, Pesco said protesters barged inside the Dalazak grid station and forcibly switched on Gulluzai and Mohammadzai feeders; both were shut down for routine load management.

The utility said line losses on the Gulluzai feeder were up to89.7 per cent and on the Muhammadzai feeder 71.9 per cent.

The utility said the forceful entries inside the power installations and act of tampering with the system not only increased the line losses but also put the power distribution system at risk.

`Pesco is working to initiate legal proceedings against Dildar Khan and other protesters for barging inside the grid stations,` the public utility said.

Earlier last week, Pesco announced to reduce power outages on 75 high-loss feeders to 12 hours after weeklong protests and forcible entries inside its installations by the ruling party lawmakers and workers.