Power outages have become a routine in the city, tormenting Karachiites in ongoing hot and humid weather. However, there is no forum available for citizens to make their tormentors accountable.
In civilised countries, citizens file heavy damage and tort suits against civic services agencies when their failure to provide service causes inconvenience to citizens; however, tort laws are still generally not in practice in Pakistan.
Electricity load shedding has become a curse for Karachiites and millions of people suffer due to the power outages in hot and humid weather; however, there is no hope that the interests of these electricity consumers would be taken care of by the government authorities.
Karachiites say they were befooled and defrauded at the time of the privatisation of the then KESC as they were promised that the privatisation would lower the power tariff and end load shedding. However, after the privatisation of the KESC not only the load shedding hours increased but so the power tariff. At that time another lie of the rulers was that the load shedding would be limited to the summer season; however, practically the privatised KESC which has now become K-Electric was allowed to carry out load shedding in winters too.
It is the cruelty of the privatisation process in Pakistan that the privatised entities are earning ‘profits’ of billions of rupees while their so-called losses, like line losses, are being transferred to consumers. Under no logic or acceptable accounting practice, any consumer could share the losses of commercial entities. However, Pakistan is the only country where consumers are also forced to pay for the losses of commercial entities from their own pocket.
Sadly, the government which is constitutionally bound to stop the exploitation of its citizens has turned the blind eye to brutal monopolies, unfair tariff, uncivilised accounting and billing practices and broad daylight fleecing of consumers.
However, electricity load shedding in Karachi has become a serious issue as the hot and humid weather of the coastal city demands uninterrupted supply of electricity, especially to residential consumers. The government should ask the power generating entities to increase the production, besides providing soft loans to every household to buy solar panels. It is a must that domestic consumers of electricity in Karachi should be encouraged and facilitated to go for alternate energy, especially solar power. It would not only get them rid of backbreaking electricity bills but also supply them dependable and cheap renewable energy.