PESHAWAR - Owing to negligence of the government and WAPDA authorities to repair thousands of faulty transformers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the poor masses have been subjected to repair these transformers on their own donations, which frequently cause internal rivalries among villagers and resulting in developing enmities among them.
A tragic incident happened in the Pahari Pora area the other night when a person was gunned down over transformer’s donation fee. Farhan Shehzad son of Inayatullah Khan, resident of Chaghal Pora, told police that the area’s transformer had not been working for the last few days and for this purpose they decided to collect donation for its repairing, as WAPDA and elected MPA were failed to bring a new transformer or repair the old one.
He said after consultation of elders, the villagers decided to collect donation of Rs400 per house to repair the transformer. He said the committee assigned the task to his brother to collect donation. However, when they along with other villagers reached the house of Murad Gul, he refused to pay Rs400 and exchange hard words with his brother. “Later on, Murad Gul, his brother Parvez along with his other cousins opened firing on my brother Arsalan, which resulted in his death on the spot,” he added. He said the assailants made their escape successfully.
The brother of Arsalan held the PESCO chief and the government responsible for the incident as it were their responsibility to repair the transformers rather than masses who despite of poverty paying donations for repairing the transformers.
A similar incident was also happened in Bahadar Kaly area, where several villagers attacked each other on transformer issue and resulted in killing of two persons.
Talking to The Nation, an official of WAPDA Parvez said that those transformers which are installed in government offices are being repaired by the government while those which are installed at private places and villages are being repaired at public expenses.
He said due to low voltage the ratio of transformers’ fault is much higher as compared to the previous years and a large number of transformers are being repaired in Noshera, ring road Peshawar and Bara road Peshawar.
He said that new transformers are available in district Nowshera, however if a villager could not afford donation then it is the responsibility of elected MPAs to pay funds for repairing to ensure relief to their people.
Similar kind of incident was also witnessed during a visit to Buner where several transformers damaged due to low voltage, plunging the villagers into deep darkness.
A local line man Miraj Gul, an expert in repairing transformers, told that transformer of 50 Kilowatt is not sufficient for more than 50 houses while in most of the places, 50Kilowatt transformers have been installed for larger population which could not afford high load and faults easily develop in them.