Gilgit Baltistan: The residents of Skardu town in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir staged a protest against the authorities over the power outages and wheat shortage in the region, local media reported.

The protesters marched with lanterns and chanted slogans against the government in the town's Hussaini Chowk, according to Dawn.

Several political and social activists participated in the sit-in, responding to a call by the Baltistan Awami Action Committee.

A spokesman for the committee said Skardu was facing power outages lasting as long as 22 hours, amid freezing temperatures.

The protesters raised slogans against the government of Gilgit-Baltistan, condemning it for "indifference to our torment".

Power outage is not the only problem that civilians are suffering, wheat shortage is also an issue that ignites frustration among the citizens.

According to Najaf Ali, who heads the Awami Action Committee, and Ghulam Hussain Athar, president of the Anjuman Tajran-i-Skardu, subsidised flour had almost vanished from the market as the federal government had curtailed supply to the region, reported Dawn.

They lamented that elected representatives paid no heed to bread-and-butter issues and most of them make themselves scarce whenever the people face hardship.

"Instead of solving people's problems, they have flown to Islamabad to escape public wrath," Najaf Ali said.

Meanwhile, civilians in Gharibabad in Qalat are also suffering from the problems of electricity and gas for a long time; load shedding, tripping, low voltage, and irregular supply of Sui gas, and that too for a very short time.

In November, the people complained to the authorities but the situation did not change. So, the frustrated people were forced to protest, reported Pak vernacular media, Intekhab Daily.

They came out on the roads and women and children closed the national highway. The traffic flow on the Karachi-Quetta was badly disrupted.

A transformer was burnt in Gharibabad last month and since then they are suffering from electricity problems because the transformer is neither repaired nor replaced so far, reported the vernacular media.

The said transformer was defective and the local people had got it repaired at their own expense many times. But now it has gone beyond repair. But the electricity company is not taking any steps to replace it.