Power supply to Makran division from Iran suspended for 2nd day

GWADAR: Three districts of Balochistan’s Makran Division facing a prolonged outage of power for two days owing to suspension of supply from Iran without prior intimation, ARY News reported on Wednesday.

Makran region of Balochistan, depends for its power needs to the import of the electricity from neighboring Iran.

The power supply to three districts of Makran including Gwadar, from Iran has been suspended since Tuesday morning, sources said.

Earlier, the locals of Makran division complained that they have been suffering the outage for a long duration but were not heard by anyone as yet.

Separately, the district authorities said that they had reached out to Quetta Electric Supply Corporation (QESCO) and asked the officials to intimate people over the development on the matter.

It is pertinent to mention here that Pakistan and Iran were entered into an agreement in year 2002, for supply of 34MW electricity, which was further increased by 30MW. Then another 30MW of electricity from Iran was inducted in the national grid in 2016 jacking the electricity import from the country to 104MW.

Pakistan’s emerging port city of Gwadar has been situated in Makran division of Balochistan, which requires increasing power supply to meet the needs of the developing port region.

Mostly, Iran’s power supply is not optimally available due to the country’s own energy demand. The average supply from Iran hovers around 40-70 MW, according to some sources.