PML-N government and before that PPP government were unimaginative and unable to coup with load shedding issue prevalent in the country for last one decade. Both these governments focused on the power generation and facilitated their conglomerate friends that are engaged in this business. The circular debt was paid to all these rich friends without basically solving the load shedding crisis. I am not proposing there is an easy solution to load shedding but it is also not an impossible one to solve despite spending trillions of Rupees.
Load shedding issue has economic, management and social dimensions which have to be addressed to find a holistic solution. The Economic issue relates to proper planning to estimate need and allocate resources to ensure availability. Management issues related to developing an efficient organisational structure of managing generation, distribution & billing. Power generation is in the hands of both public and private sector while distribution and billing are localised. There seems to be a conflict of authority between federal and provincial governments. Federal government blames provincial governments for lack of support to collect bills. In last ten years improving distribution and billing has been ignored which resulted in still high load shedding despite adding more generation capacity. Lastly, the citizens who engage in electricity theft are also to blame. I have personally seen many madrassah’s stealing electricity in villages as well as other citizens and some industrial units. In other words, religious scholars that should guide and educate people about not stealing electricity are themselves involved in it. People steal electricity because the cost of it is very high for them to afford it. Secondly, they believe if rich can steal big money it is their right to get free electricity.
We all need to review our lives and try to live more honestly for the nation to become healthy again both economically, socially and spiritually.
Abdul Quayyum Khan Kundi
Islamabad
