As summer set in and power outages multiplied the government was quick to promise that there would be no load shedding during Sehri and Iftar in Ramazan. On what basis the pledge was made, there is no information on that, but just the opposite happened. On the very first day of Ramazan, half of those who fasted ate their first Sheri in candlelight. So the promise that there would be no load shedding at the times of Sehri and Iftar was bogus, and the quarters concerned ought to be asked to pay for this canard. Over time people are getting used to hearing such declarations, which usually end in ever-receding mirages. But what is astounding is that the bureaucracy involved also made a fool of the Prime Minister himself. If any of Nawaz Sharif's pledges stood out as the factor that tilted the electoral balance in his favour in the 2013 election, it was his commitment to rid Pakistan of the lingering curse of load shedding. And all along these four years he kept claiming that the demons of load shedding and power outages were on the run. Claims were made that the problem of circular debt has been resolved, generation and transmission drawbacks have been taken care of, and by March 2018 (that's on the eve of next general election), an additional 9,107MW power would be available. That was his recurrent claim - until this past Monday when he happened to personally check the veracity of this very pleasing scenario. During a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Energy (CCE), where the officials' everything is fine perspective didn't sit well with the Prime Minister, he made a reality check. On his personal call to district civil officers, he was told that the duration of load shedding and power outages was at least twice, and in some cases thrice, that long than what was being claimed by officials in the Ministry of Water and Power. To his utter disbelief, he was being kept in the dark about the colossal failure in the very field which won him the last election, and given his government's quite disappointing performance in that very field may have a negative fallout on his bid to win the next general election.
The almost countrywide public agitation against load shedding and outages is understandable. No summer has been as harsh as this one. In the last week of May temperatures do go very high, but this May they touched new height. We are not here to justify the violent reaction witnessed in some parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. But we also don't hold them guilty for reacting so violently as they did. The government needs to revisit the entire gambit of its energy policies and take the people into confidence on what stopped it from realizing its pledge of getting rid of the curse of loadshedding during four years of its tenure. The bitter truth is that the officials have been lying all the time. They must be held accountable both for befooling the government and deceiving the public.
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