- This load shedding is completely ridiculous now, every hour without electricity s costing the country $10,000s factories with millions of dollars worth of equipment are sitting stopped cos of no electricity. This is like telling a worker he can only work 1 day per week yet he still has the same bills to pay.

2 - Now the eco-friendly Tempo (micro micro buses) don't have hours of electricity to charge up ... what will people do ? hook them to smokey generators ?

- On my first night in Hetauda a policemen kept following me down the street and I couldn't understand it. Yes it was pitch black cos of load-shedding, but it was only 8.30pm. Here the hotel shuts at 9pm. I'd always thought Nepal is so amazingly safe, but the brothers explained they used to open the café until 10pm, but now during load-shedding it's too difficult to handle the drunk and drugged up people roaming the streets .

- I suddenly realised that of course you never see any women out at night, cos in the darkness of load-shedding they are easy targets for drugged up guys.

- So the load-shedding is having a serious effect. For me a a man it's a lttle boring to visit Nepali towns, but for foreign women it means they have to stick to Kathmandu and trekking...so that's a big effect. .. .

- This is what the engineers told me. Is there any wonder why there is load shedding ? If I gave my customers a product and failed to collect any money from 25% of them then I would have problems. That money could have be used to build new power plants.

- OK before there were civil war times so many people just got into the habit of connecting themselves and maybe poor people weren't able to pay for electricity. Of course in government the Maoists are reluctant to crack down on it's own supporters it's easy to let this "unofficial discount" continue. If I were the power company I would tell the government "the government is responsible for the 25% shortfall and should pay up". NEA is not in a position to police electricity thieves all it can do is produce electricity. If I were NEA I would collect money on a town by town basis and tell the municipalities to pay NEA and then the municipality should collect money from businesses and citizens.