A killing heat

There comes a point at which temperatures rise to a level at which it is difficult to sustain human life, and although that point has not yet been reached in Pakistan, the citizens of Turbat on Sunday last suffered the highest daytime temperature ever recorded in Pakistan — 53.5°C. This exceeds the record set in May 2010 by a half of one degree centigrade. That was at Moenjodaro, which in turn exceeded the record set in Larkana in May 1998. The new Turbat record is merely a part of a range of extreme weather events that are hitting Pakistan as the effects of global warming consolidate into a new normal, where extreme events are every-day happenings. Meteorologists are predicting that the current heat wave will persist for the first two weeks of June eventually to be mitigated by the onset of the monsoon. Interior Sindh, southern Punjab and parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa are going to be to worst affected.

The month of April also broke records nationwide in many cities and there is no clear end to when the rise in temperatures will flatten out. With the heat comes pressure on the ramshackle electricity supply infrastructure. There was a large breakdown in Karachi over the last weekend and a man was shot in the Dargai area of the Malakand division and 11 others are reportedly injured as protesters rallied against load-shedding on Sunday. The summer is yet in its infancy and it may be expected that if power breakdowns persist then civil unrest is not only likely but inevitable.

With a year to go until the next general election and all the mainstream parties in the early stages of the campaign, the failure to crack the power conundrum by the PML-N government is the most significant weakness in its armour. Utility providers are already failing in their commitments to the provision of power in the month of Ramazan, and more than just meteorological records are set to be broken.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 30^th, 2017.

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