Either we sell off our property, move to another area or we compromise our moral values and start bribing KESC staff.
KARACHI: As consumers of KESC-provided electricity, residents of Block 7 in Gulistan-e-Jauhar have been facing the worst kind of discriminatory treatment — nine hours of load-shedding every day. As if this was not enough, we now also experience half-hour shutdowns each night and extreme voltage fluctuations make the lives of people more miserable. Only a couple of kilometres away, other blocks of Gulistan-e-Jauhar are now exempt from load-shedding. The reason for this biased treatment is that there are some apartments and illegal markets, in the vicinity of our block, where there is virtually no or minimal billing. Only a fixed amount is paid to the KESC staff, who then categorise our whole area as theft prone and thus subject it to the most brutal treatment possible in terms of load-shedding.
The complaint system at the KESC is seemingly useless as hundreds of complaints over several months have had no effect or response. Communication channels that involve interaction between the management and the consumers have been replaced with non-accountable means like email and call centres.
Few choices now remain for the residents of our area — either we sell off our property and move to another area or we compromise our moral values and start bribing the KESC staff the same way others are doing. This act of collective punishment by the KESC is unique in the country. It is very much against the basic spirit of justice and the rule of law. I would, therefore, hope that the judiciary would challenge this discriminatory policy as no one else seems to be bothered about such things in this country anymore.
Adnan Altaf
Published in The Express Tribune, October 5th, 2013.
Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.
