LAHORE: With the Ministry of Water and Power concentrating only on uninterrupted supplies during Sehar and Iftar, the country suffered massive loadshedding in unprecedented heatwave for rest of the day because the shortfall had widened closer to 7,000MW.

The ministry conceded a shortfall of 4,600MW during the peak hours and claimed that average 24-hour gap between demand and supply was only 3,900MW. Its subsidiary companies, however, said the gap was at least 2,500MW more than what the ministry confessed.

Protests and violence were also reported in some parts of the country in reaction to outages even during the Sehar and Iftar.`It has been unprecedented heatwave and the system is almost collapsing for two reasons,` says an official of the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC). First, the system was grossly overloaded because of record generation, he said.

The previous record of 16,866MW was achieved last year and it went up to 17,121MW today (Tuesday). It literally stretched transmission and distribution to its limits, bringing it closer to breaking point, he said.

The demand figure that the ministry is presenting is national domestic demand only, excluding 3,500MW industrial and commercial demand andaround3,000MWKarachiElectric (K-Electric). This demand figure also excludes agricultural supplies.

Thus, what the ministry was giving was not the true picture, he confessed.

The ministry itself says it wasfalling short of demand by 900MW even during Sehar and Iftar. The total is thus closer to 7,000MW.

`It has been disastrous situation for the common man,` says Muhammad Ramzan of Walton Road. `The ministry has left a few holes in its claims, which could be exploited to hide any demand figure. It says that it was carrying out more loadshedding in high-loss areas. No one knows when his or her area falls in that category and make consumers suffer? Secondly, it says that local faults could also cause additional outages. This too could not be confirmed. So, the ministry is just trying to fake a situation that does not exist,` he said `The ministry thinks that if situation is under control in a few urban areas, it can get away with any claim: if Lahore, Islamabad are get-ting supplies to full extent and other major cities to a larger extent, it can make tall claims. Even today, eighthour loadshedding was carried out in our areas. Supplies during Sehar and Iftar have only squeezed the window; eight hours loadshedding has to be adjusted in the rest of the day, hurting people more,` he adde d.

`The Lahore Electric Supplies Company (Lesco) was getting only 65 per cent of its supplies and had to balance rest ofit through loadshedding,` says an official of the company. `To make the matters even worse for the company, it has to handle ministerial pressure as well, which, of late, has become very energetic. The only option it is lef t with is to take care of a few important areas and make the peripheral areas suffer and that is precisely what it has been doing,` he admitted.