Power theft and enforcement

The government’s ‘charitable’ approach to managing power supply is going to cost the taxpayer almost Rs600 billion this year, despite remarkable improvements in combatting power theft. The government claims it recovered about Rs46 billion from power thieves in September and October alone, but this is still just a drop in the ocean compared to the overall estimated loss, which is driven by a combination of poor enforcement, security concerns and straight-up political appeasement.

This is why the biggest drains on the power sector remain the ex-Fata region, the entire state of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and tubewell operations in Balochistan. Almost Rs200 billion in expected losses have been attributed to these three subjects, according to the power division secretary. The power division’s top bureaucrat says the government was not even pursuing these three areas because of the various influencing factors. While the collection and payment rate disputes between Islamabad and AJK are relatively understandable, the continuation of lax collection policies in the ex-Fata regions, over five years after their merger with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, is no longer justifiable, especially in these tough economic times. Meanwhile, the collection problems vis-a-vis Balochistan tubewells were attributed to “enforcement challenges”, which is really a combination of lack of security and lack of enforcement capability. Though security remains a legitimate problem in the restive province, the failure to penalise non-payment and theft through more modern detection methods, such as measuring consumption patterns, is inexcusable.

Still, credit where it is due, if the authorities can keep up the pace of clearing losses due to pilferage in other areas and then keep them low, it will create some space and allow for refocusing resources in areas where enforcement capability remains low. But this is easier said than done — maintaining momentum has long been the downfall of many of the best policies of successive governments.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 15^th, 2023.

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