Kathmandu, January 25:

Valley denizens and people living in other parts of the country are on the verge of facing a 21-hour load-shedding every week.

Citing a decrease in discharge of water due to dry season, the Nepal Electricity Authority

said that, with effect from tomorrow, power supply will be cut in each house in the valley and other parts of the country every day.

According to the new schedule published by the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) today, people in the valley will have to live under dark in the morning, daytime or in the evening. The valley has been divided into seven groups — each group will face load-shedding in one of seven time periods every day starting from tomorrow.

Pointing at the “decreasing flow of water and pressure on the Kulekhani Hydro-electricity Project, “ Sher Singh Bhat, the chief of the System Operation Department at the Nepal Electricity Authority, said, “We had to take this decision.

The 21-hour load-shedding regime will remain in effect till mid-March.

We will increase load-shedding hours after that,” he said. A resident of the Group 1 area will face load-shedding on Sunday and Monday evening, on late morning on Tuesday, Wednesday afternoon, on Thursday and Friday morning, and at night every Saturday.

The morning period denotes 5.30 to 8.30 am, late morning denotes 9.00 to 12.00 am, afternoon denotes 12.00 to 3.00 pm, evening denotes 5.00 to 8.00 pm and night denotes 10.00 pm to 1.00 am.

“Those who faced load-shedding on Thursday morning according to the previous schedule belong to Group 1, those who had it on Friday belong to Group 2 and so on,” Sher Singh Bhat, the chief of the System Operation Department at the Nepal Electricity Authority said.

The Nepal Electricity Authority had slapped weekly two-and-a-half hour load-shedding last December.

The present total installed capacity in Nepal is 614 MW. Hydropower’s share is 90 per cent of the total installed capacity, which is 99 per cent of annually generated energy.