Pakistan: Tall tales and load shedding

It is a sad state indeed when the tail end of spring starts to feel like the burning summer months are upon us. For that, we can thank the government, which has started subjecting citizens to harsh load shedding once again. The power outages are so bad that they are climbing to as much as 16 hours a day. One dreads to think what will happen in the middle of summer when the people start using their air conditioners and electric fans, putting extra burden on the national grid. So is this the plan of the PML-N government, to steadily increase the misery of the masses in total contradiction to the election promises it made last year? One of the main priorities of its manifesto was to curb the debilitating energy crisis as soon as it came to power.

We have yet to see that happen.It is unfortunate that the PML-N seems to be no different than other parties, doing nothing but playing politics with the energy situation. Minister of State for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali has announced that load shedding will not be more than six to eight hours. One wonders to whom he is speaking considering that power outages occur after every hour throughout the day. If the minister is feeling so confident he should tell us how the government plans to reduce the load shedding by as much as 10 hours. He has also gone on record to say that some 4,250 MW of electricity will be added in the coming few weeks without telling us just how that will happen. Someone must alert the minister to the fact that when making such bold statements, he must back them up otherwise it will just be the usual rhetoric that no one will believe.

Abid Sher Ali should be more realistic when it comes to such important matters. As soon as the PML-N government came to power, it gave Rs 500 billion to plug the circular debt that had accumulated over the years. However, that was, as predicted in this space, a stopgap measure. Circular debt has climbed once again to Rs 300 billion. The main reason for this is bill default and theft. The biggest culprit of the former is the government itself. Most government institutions fail to pay their bills. This has added up to literally crippling the system, rendering the energy production deficit a stubborn problem. Abid Sher Ali likes to accuse the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government of protecting those who steal electricity but he is unaware that the malaise is part of all government institutions. While the government is looking into different schemes and programmes to enhance electricity production, e.g. coal, hydel, etc, it needs to be honest with the people instead of feeding them tall tales of fixing the problem in record time.