LAHORE PAKISTAN (2013): HEAT WAVE

My driver in Lahore kept mentioning 'electric-city' and after the third day it dawned on me that he meant electricity, or I should say the lack of it. The city was experiencing a 30-year record -breaking heat wave. It was 48 degrees yesterday (that’s 118F). People were without electricity for up to twenty hours a day and many were sleeping out on the streets. It’s been a disaster at several of the hospitals where they have cancelled operations for days on end. Shahid Hussain, a journalist who has been showing me around the city, only got two hours of sleep last night because of the heat- and he has two small kids. Everywhere in the city people were waiting in line to purchase blocks of ice. Both government and independent power plants were being strained to the limit. Many believe that the scarcity of electricity is driven by politics and when the new Prime Minister takes office next month the power supply will resume and he will take the credit for it.