Chitral -- The one megawatt Chitral Power house has forever been a pain in the neck for the residents of the town. On Thursday, a surprise check of the power house by Wg Cdr (r) Fardad Ali Shah, accompanied by Abdullah Jan and Haji Ghulam Hussain of the Electricity restoration committee revealed that only two out of the four generators were in operation, producing only 500 Kva power against the one megawatt capacity. On inquiry, the committee members were told that two generators were out of order since the last two months for want of reparation and only yesterday have the parts arrived after being repaired from Lahore and the foreman was busy fixing them.

The staff present said the dilapidated generators are breaking up every now and then and it takes months getting their parts repaired from down country. The staff showed damaged roof of the powerhouse caused by flying turbine blades and said their lives are in peril all the time as at any time blades of the worn out generators fly out viciously at tangents

The foreman Iftikhar Ahmad posted at the powerhouse three months back said the power house was indeed in a deplorable condition and disclosed that by simply replacing the generators with new ones, without any other changes, the power could easily be jacked up to Two MW.

Although WAPDA has carried out many theoretical surveys to upgrade the generators, but have practically not moved an inch in solving this problem. The residents of Chitral town are strongly demanding that the powerhouse should be taken over from WAPDA and handed over to any private operator or at least to SHYDO,.so that perpetual but avoidable shortage of power in the town can be seriously addressed. - CN report, 23 June 2011.

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