Extending weekend, Pakistan plans to tackle power deficit

Pakistan's prime minister yesterday announced a radical plan to tackle the nation's debilitating energy shortages, including extending the weekend and banning all-night wedding parties.
Daily power cuts hit homes throughout the country, with some Pakistanis in rural areas without electricity for most of the day, fuelling discontent, crippling industry and triggering violent protests.
Pakistan is able to produce only about 80 percent of its required electricity, officials have said, a crisis blamed on soaring demand, debt, a lack of investment, corruption and a creaking distribution system.
A raft of new measures, effective immediately, was announced after a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who said the plan would save 500 megawatts of electricity per day across the country.
"Never before in the history of Pakistan has such a conference been held with participation of all provincial chief ministers and other stakeholders, showing that all are on board to resolve the energy crisis," Gilani said.
In an effort to curb electricity usage, markets will be ordered to close at 8:00pm, government offices banned from using air conditioning before 11:00am, and lavish wedding celebrations ordered to last no more than three hours.
Pakistan's official weekend will be extended from one to two days -- Saturday and Sunday -- while neon signs and brightly-lit billboards would also be banned, said Raja Parvaiz Ashraf, minister for water and power.
"The decisions will be reviewed by July 30 to see impact of the measures," he told a news conference.
The government hopes the drastic measures will help calm nationwide dissent over the energy shortages.
Pakistanis have been pouring on to the streets almost daily across the country to protest the power cuts, burning tyres, blocking roads and pelting police with stones in increasingly disruptive demonstrations.
On Monday, a suicide bomber struck one such protest in the northwest city of Peshawar, killing 24 people. It was the latest attack bearing the hallmarks of Taliban militants blamed for hundreds of bombings in the past three years.
While Pakistanis are furious at the Taliban violence, day-to-day problems like power cuts and soaring inflation have sent the government's approval ratings plummeting since its election in February 2008.