Hundreds of people stormed a power station in one of Pakistan’s hottest cities on Friday to protest power outages lasting up to 20 hours a day, police said.
Protesters also ransacked an administrative office adjacent to the train station in Sibi, a rural town in the southern province of Balochistan, where temperatures reached 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in an incident on Thursday night.
“Last night a group attacked the electricity supply office and committed looting. A case has been registered against them,” police official Anayatullah Bungulcai told AFP, adding that the group numbered as many as 800.
In Pakistan, planned power outages (also known as load shedding) are frequent due to fuel shortages, and the duration of the outages varies by region.
In Pakistan’s largest province, Balochistan, a lack of electricity production and non-payment of consumer bills has led to prolonged power outages affecting the entire region.
Afzal Baloch, spokesman for Quetta Electricity Supply Company, told AFP that the company was incurring “significant” losses every month due to unpaid bills.
But protester Noor Ahmad said on Friday he was “forced to take action” over “excessive power outages that last for hours despite us paying our bills on time.”
Sibi is one of the hottest inhabited areas of Pakistan, with temperatures regularly reaching 50 °C (122 °F) during heatwaves.
Scientists say that as a result of climate change, such events are becoming longer lasting, more frequent and more intense.
Balochistan is also one of Pakistan’s poorest provinces and suffers from insecurity, rugged terrain, unreliable water supplies and limited employment opportunities.
