Adding capacity, producing more power without controlling line losses, theft is like pouring water into leaking bucket
DUBAI: This summer, we are facing an unprecedented heatwave, especially in Karachi. The rulers of the country who are sitting in their air-conditioned offices and homes need to explain to the people why they have failed to protect the country from effects of climate change, which is one of the main reasons for these record temperatures in Karachi. Why are there so few trees and parks in Karachi?
To make matters worse, we have unprecedented power outages and that, too, in the holy month of Ramazan. The government announced before Ramazan that people would have some relief from power cuts during this month but the situation in this regard has only worsened. What has the Nawaz Sharif government done to overcome the problem of power outages during the last two years? The PML-N made big promises to control electricity shortage during its 2013 election campaign but it has failed entirely to deliver on this promise.
It is understandable that new power generation projects take a long time to come into operation, but whatever could be done in the short term, such as controlling power theft and reducing line losses, has not been done efficiently. How many power thieves has the government caught and punished so far? Line losses, according to media reports, are around 27 per cent of the electricity produced. That percentage of line losses is unacceptably high. The Dubai Electricity and Water Company had six per cent line losses in the year 1999, which have come down to around three per cent in the year 2014, due to administrative actions of the authorities concerned. Since the Pakistan government has failed to reduce power theft and line losses during the last two years, at the very least, the federal minister of water and power and his junior minister should resign and let someone more capable do the job. The PML- N government says that power cuts will be eliminated towards the end of 2017 when new power generation projects will be completed. In this connection, I would like to point out that adding more power generation capacity and producing more electricity without controlling line losses and power theft will be like pouring water into a leaking bucket.
Ejaz Ahmad Magoon
Published in The Express Tribune, June 27th, 2015.
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