LAHORE: Tuesday night`s thunderstorm and rain around Sehri hours disrupted the electricity supply to several parts of Lahore and districts such as Kasur, Okara, Nankana Sahib and Sheikhupura.

As many as 276 feeders including 179 in Lahore tripped leading to hourslong power suspension. A major feeder supplying electricity to Ferozepur Road industrial areas tripped twice -first dur-ing night hours on Tuesday and then on Wednesday evening as a result of which work at factories and units came to a halt.

`The power supply to industry on Ferozepur Road remained suspended for over 20 hours leading to closure of factories and leaving scores of workers without job for many hours,` claimed a factory owner.

A Lahore Electric Supply Company (Lesco) senior officer denied it saying dozens of feeders including the one on Ferozepur Road tripped around 9pm on Tuesday due to thunderstorm. `We energised these all till 12am. But later, a second spell of thunderstorm and rain caused tripping of 170 of the tota1900feeders of Lahoreurbanareasand82 of those in Okara, Kasur, Nankana and Sheikhupura,` Lesco Chief Executive Officer Syed Wajid Ali Kazmi told Dawn.

He said Lesco teams succeeded in energising 225 of the 252 tripped feeders by 10am on Wednesday and the remaining 27 were functional till 1:30pm.

`Normally in such situa-tions the feeders in operation trip. But it is strange that Ferozepur industry feeder tripped despite the fact that it was already shut under a scheduled programme (6:30pm to 4:00am). However, it was made operational since it also tripped before 12am on Tuesday,` Mr Kazmi added.

He said that on Wednesday evening (around Spm), this industrial feeder again tripped owing to technical fault but the Lesco teams immediately responded and rectified the fault and ener-gised the feeder within one hour.

A spokesman for Lesco said in a statement 276 feeders were affected by the thunderstorm and rain.

`The 276 feeders include 179 urban and 97 in rural areas. All were energised in a record time by Lesco teams,` he claimed.

People in Lahore and adjoining districts continued to suf fer loadshedding for six to eight hours in urban and 10 to 12 hours in rural areas. There were also complaints about unscheduled loadshedding and low voltage.