Thaindian News

Islamabad, July 6 (IANS) The scale of power outages in Pakistan is “certain to rouse anger among people”, said a Pakistani daily after two people were killed and 30 injured during a protest in a town over acute electricity shortage.

The News International said in an editorial Wednesday: “The anarchy we are seeing across the country seems to be reaching some kind of climax.”

In Punjab province’s Mianwali town, two people were killed and over 30 injured Monday when the police opened fire on a crowd of around 2,000 locals protesting power shortage in the area.

Pakistan’s power shortfall has now reached 5,000 MW. The country is generating 13,240 MW against a peak demand of 18,065 MW.

The editorial said that it is a fact that “the scale of loadshedding these days is certain to rouse anger amongst people who continue to be confronted with huge electricity bills but no power to run fans, lights, or machinery”.

“It is this problem which must be addressed by the government if other tragedies of the kind seen in Mianwali are to be prevented.

“More protests could break out given that power outages are commonplace everywhere and have affected the lives of hundreds of thousands across the country. The situation threatens to spiral out of control. It needs to be treated as an emergency and steps need to be taken to prevent further suffering,” the editorial said.