Power theft is a heinous crime and those who use electricity illegally should be severely punished
KARACHI: The electricity situation in Karachi has been alarming for the last several years. The shortfall in electricity has not only impacted business activities but also the domestic lives of people. Students and patients are the worst-affected ones.
Usually power suspension is blamed on power suppliers — but consumers are also equally to blame. Those who do not pay their bills on time and resort to stealing power are also responsible for the many hours of outages. Electrical equipment used in houses, including heaters, geysers, iron presses and water motors, further increase power consumption leading to wastage and an increase in power bills. In order to avoid increasing electricity bills, consumers resort to hooking up to illegal connections.
With the illegal use of electricity, the power utility authorities fail to plan accordingly and hence the incidents of snapped electrical wires or PMT fault increase due to overloading, which troubles the public in the form of prolonged power suspension in a particular area. It is clear that staff of power utilities cannot reach soon to rectify such faults and because of this delay the outage duration gets prolonged.
Power theft is a heinous crime and those who use electricity illegally should be severely punished. Kunda connections might be beneficial for those who connect to these kundas but we the honest consumers of power in this city have to bear the brunt of high tariffs and inadequate supply of electricity. The launch of Operation Burq by K-Electric has instilled hope among Karachiites, especially bill-paying consumers who have suffered a lot at the hands of the power thieves. I am optimistic that through this initiative we will finally achieve some respite from severe power cuts.
Madiha Akhtar
Published in The Express Tribune, May 10th, 2015.
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