This cultural change is exactly what we want to encourage in this country
KARACHI: I have moved to DHA Karachi from Model Town, Lahore. While I am still adjusting to several cultural differences between the two cities, one thing I am truly grateful for the continuous power that I get here. In Lahore during recent winters there were power outages of at least three hours a day. During summers there would be six to eight hours of load-shedding. On account of the load-shedding, all consumers had to spend a significant amount of money on buying, running and maintaining UPS and generators to ensure power availability. This is despite the fact that I pay a hefty bill. Essentially, I was not only subsidising someone’s theft somewhere through my bills, but was also paying extra to ensure my power availability.
In Karachi, in contrast, I do not have to worry about daily load-shedding at all and what a mental relief it is. I understand that this is due to some policy by K-Electric where they ensure continuous power to those areas where people pay their bills and load-shed in those areas where electricity is stolen. This is an ingenious policy and should be applied to other cities as well. Instead of punishing the honest bill-paying citizens of the city and further enabling the crooks through uniform load-shedding (which is what happens in Punjab) this policy encourages more people to start paying their bill through a carrot and stick approach. From a macro-economic perspective, this cultural change is exactly what we want to encourage in this country.
Sameena Tariq
Published in The Express Tribune, April 7th, 2017.
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