No one at the corporate level is ready to listen to consumer woes
LAHORE: The last 10 years or so in Pakistan have been dominated by an electricity crisis. There has been severe loadshedding coupled with mismanagement. It seems that from 2018 onwards the next 10 years will be a decade of another electricity crisis resulting solely from incapacitated and inefficient distribution systems (11kV and below) of DISCOs coupled with, of course, mismanagement.
The above statement is based on the incumbent government’s claims that loadshedding will end or be substantially reduced once the currently-under-construction power plants are completed in the election year. While previous governments had no clue on how to solve the crisis, the PML-N government has focused its efforts on the construction of power plants and bulk transmission lines. How the government plans to cross this chasm of death called the distribution system remains to be seen, however.
Our distribution networks are marred with outdated installations, overloaded transformers and wires, poor operations and maintenance, and an overworked and ill-equipped staff. They are not equipped to handle any more electricity or load. Throughout the summer, hapless consumers suffer the agony of low voltages, frequently prolonged breakdowns and unscheduled loadshedding due to flawed distribution networks.
I live in the R1 sector of Johar Town, Lahore. Our locality faces perennial low voltages and frequent transformer breakdowns in the summer. Recently, we completed a hat-trick of transformer breakdowns on three consecutive nights. On one of the nights, there was no fuel in the company’s maintenance vehicle so the area’s residents had to arrange fuel for this vehicle so that the repairmen could come and do their work. Only one team, consisting of three staff members in a single maintenance vehicle, is available to attend to all complaints of the sizeable area. One has to wait for hours before a complaint is resolved, only to encounter the same spectre the next night. No one at the corporate level is ready to listen to consumer woes. With such a sorry state of affairs, energy may be abundantly available in 2018, but with little means to fetch it from the grid station and provide it to consumers.
If we don’t want ourselves to be sucked in again by the energy crisis of another dimension in 2018, while we barely have come out of it, the government should come up with plans to revamp our distribution systems to ensure a reliable, stable and uninterrupted power supply to consumers.
Naseem Ahmed KK
Published in The Express Tribune, August 4th, 2016.
Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.
