EDITORIAL: There appears to be little evidence, so far, of a sensible solution to the dispute that has erupted between the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and federal governments on account of the hours’ long load-shedding the people of the province have been suffering through.
The row escalated after KP Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur issued an ultimatum to the Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) to reduce power outages on all grids to 12 hours a day, and in a very obvious attempt to pander to the gallery, forcibly entered the grid station located in his constituency of Dera Ismail Khan and directed the staff to follow through on his orders.
Since then, a number of PTI lawmakers have barged into grid stations over the course of the Eid holidays and forcibly switched on the power supply. Pesco has now warned that this highly irresponsible behaviour could “lead the system towards collapse”, and that consumers would have to “wait for days, not hours” for normalcy to return if any serious damage is inflicted on the network.
The heart of the present conflict lies in the fact that Pesco is among the worst-performing electricity distribution companies in the country when it comes to controlling line losses, and with power theft in KP rampant, it routinely reports power losses as high as 60 percent on average on its network.
And as has become the norm over the last few years, like other Discos, it has resorted to imposing prolonged load-shedding in areas with high pilferage in a bid to penalise aberrant behaviour on the part of consumers, never mind the adverse impact on honest customers.
While serious questions can be raised on this approach to recovering line losses, and while there is a very obvious need to provide relief to the people of KP from prolonged power outages, the response of the provincial government – verging on hooliganism – is clearly not the answer.
There had been some hope of cooperation between the KP and federal governments last month when they had come to an agreement to address the issues plaguing the transmission system in the province, but with citizens reeling under the impact of soaring temperatures, PTI lawmakers have now opted for populist rhetoric and actions instead of looking for serious solutions for the problem at hand.
The provincial government must realise that instigating protests that could end up vandalising the transmission system will only worsen the situation. In recent months, Minister for Power Awais Leghari has pointed out the problem of weak writ of the government in parts of KP, which has rendered responding to electricity theft, ensuring bill recoveries and executing meterisation efforts a tall order.
This present state of affairs is evidently crying out for collaboration between provincial and federal authorities to counter widespread pilferage and non-recovery of bills. Moreover, the KP chief minister must realise that his suggestion that the billions owed by the centre to the province under the head of net hydel profits be utilised to offset the province’s electricity liabilities is a non-starter, as not only does the federal government not have the requisite finances, this also does not address the core problem of power theft and line losses.
For that, apart from much-needed cooperation between the federal and provincial governments, Pesco must also pull its socks up to deal with the corruption and inefficiencies in the system.
An alternative must be found for the current method of revenue-based power cuts, i.e., suspension of power supply to areas with high pilferage and poor bill recovery as that approach is not only unlawful, as has been pointed out in this space before, it also ends up penalising honest consumers.
For a permanent solution to the problems plaguing the power distribution system, the incompetence and corruption plaguing Discos must be tackled head on.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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