Pokhara, August 9:

Power outages, which have become part and parcel of life in Pokhara, have been affecting people from all walks of life, including proprietors of cyber cafes, computer centres, photo studios, electrical goods stores, sawmills and grinding mills for quite some time.

“Power outages occur throughout the week,” locals said, adding the outages lasts for a couple of hours.

Tourist hotspots and business hubs, including Prithvi Chowk, Amar Singh Chowk, Sirjana Chowk, Mahendrapul and Chipledhunga, are among the places which have been hit the hardest due to power outages.

According to Jagadish Sharma Poudel, an engineer at the Pokhara branch office of the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), excessive consumption of power in Pokhara is to blame for power outages.

Power outages occur in areas where power consumption is excessively high. Another engineer of the NEA Pokhara said power supply is cut off when the frequency relay system of transmission grid is affected due to excessive load.

An employee of the Pokhara branch of the Nepal Electricity Authority Bam Dev Subedi said lightning, storms and malfunctioning transformers also cause power outages.