By Maryam Gilani
The Byzantine situation of load shedding entails a long history in which successive regimes have contributed—positively and negatively—but the situation became more and more nettlesome and tortious over the period of time. It required a diligent effort and alacrity to address this conundrum. The present government has proved to be industrious in addressing issues of public concern. It would be pertinent to mention here that the opposition parties and a section of media attempted, at several stages, to thwart the progressive efforts but, to the luck of Pakistan, everything continued as planned. However, in order to have a true appreciation of the cerebral approach of the government, it is important to have a glance at the history.
Since independence in 1947, Pakistan had been primarily dependent for its electricity needs on the two state-owned vertically integrated power monopolies: Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) and Karachi Electricity Supply Company (KESC).
While KESC covered the large demand of the business city of Karachi, WAPDA covered the rest of the country. Both were a fully-integrated generation, transmission, and distribution companies and controlled by the government of Pakistan through the Ministry of Water and Power.
Out of Pakistan’s net effective generation capacity of 19,000MW, as of end 2010, WAPDA and KESC contributed 61 per cent. IPPs came in second and nuclear power rounded it off.
Since their inception, both WAPDA and KESC had been plagued with inefficiencies, poor governance, red-tapism, and political interferences. Transmission and distribution (T&D) losses amounted to 30-40 per cent. This was as much a result of a lack of adequate investment in the strained transmission network as of the power thefts by various groups and individuals. On average, about 20 per cent of dues were not recovered, most of them owed by other public sector entities.
As a result of these inefficiencies, successive governments injected significant subsidies into them to keep the end consumer tariff manageable so as to minimise political damage. To counter these chronic problems and encouraged by the donor agencies like World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB), the government has recently announced that 63 per cent of the feeders in the country are now load shedding free. To translate this with more clarity it essentially means that the areas where the line losses and theft are minimal can enjoy an uninterrupted supply of electricity.
Minister for Power Division Sardar Awais Leghari while giving details at a news conference said that zero load shedding feeders include LESCO 1227, GEPCO 748, FESCO 896, IESCO 710, MEPCO 763, PESCO 309, HESCO, 204, QUESCO 61 and tribal areas 29 feeders.
This is not a small achievement, because the present government inherited a huge shortfall. PPP, despite its tall claims to eradicate electricity load shedding, exasperated the situation by launching schemes like rental powers that provided almost no relief to consumers. The incumbent government worked hard and launched thermal, hydel, solar, wind and nuclear power projects, many of which are now contributing to the national grid and some more are in different stages of implementation. The announcement of zero load shedding is not because of reduction during the winter season, but the country today has 2,700MW of surplus electricity, and the situation would improve further in coming months when more projects would start generating electricity. By successfully addressing the chronic problem of power outage, the incumbent government has disproved assertions by leaders like Syed Khursheed Shah, who have been saying that the menace of load shedding would persist in 2018 as well. Apart from electricity, the present government also took practical steps to overcome gas shortage.
