In Karachi the rains are not a blessing, but they do a fine job of exposing the inefficiencies of officialdom, the fake promises,the reports of work done which exists only on the municipal paper. Hardly a millimetre of rain falls and the gutters and nalas which were supposed to be cleaned of refuse are overflowing their muck. Roads, bypass and underpass flood dangerously high so that traffic slows down or cannot ply. The buses which have supposedly passed the fitness test breakdown, stranding passengers. There is no need to enumerate all the woes which land in Karachi once the rains happen. You have experience them firsthand.

We suffer and complain to each other of the particular problem each of us face. There is one villain which victimises all of us indiscriminately, and that is K-Electric. The moment the first drops of rain fall, KAPOW! transmitters blast and power breakdowns occur. No hope of return of power supply for anything from three to thirteen hours, and once fifteen hours, because the company owns few vehicles equipped to undertake power repair. If you ring up the company to complain all you hear is a recorded message. You will not drive down to the complaint centre to wring the necks of the staff there because it would be foolish to tool the car through flooded lanes where new pits and cave-ins may have been caused by the rain water.

When the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) became the privatised K-Electric one had hoped for better power supply. It seems, however that only the name changed, the chronic problems remained as is, or as was. The new set-up is very polite. Every month they send SMS to consumers informing them how much monthly payment is due and what is the due date. Later they will SMS to thank you for receiving the dues. The KESC was never polite, but K-Electric's politeness does not make us love them. We hate them as much as we hated the KESC for their inefficiency and continuously upgrading of the utility bill.

One cost incurred because of the inefficiency of K-Electric for which there is no compensation to the consumer is the number of electric gadgets in the home which burn out in the surge of 400 volts which happen when the transmission goes haywire. Even when power supply resumes it is not steady. The lights flicker continuously. Soon you find it has damaged the fridge, the freezer, the fans and other things. You either turn off the supply or let the fluctuation spoil your equipment. In fact you may not even be aware of the flicker if it happens in the night when you have fallen into an exhausted coma.

If you were to total the amount consumers spend on repairing or replacing electrical equipment it is likely to run into a billion rupees. Except in the slums there is no home in Karachi without some kind of electric gadget. Most will have fans and TV, a washing machine and a fridge. A friend who lives in Defence ran to turn off her washing machine the moment power supply began to fluctuate. Too late, the machine she had purchased just a week ago was smoking. Her money loss will not be compensated by the K-Electric, will it? In Ramazan the fridge in another house in PECHS was not cooling, the fridge repair man said there was nothing wrong with the compressor, only gas had leaked. But in the recent rain the compressor burned out. That cost her a bomb to replace. Will the K-Electric company compensate her for the problem faulty power supply during the rains caused the poor woman to dip into her savings. She also lost a thousand rupees worth of cooked and raw foods which rotted in the fridge because the repair man could not buy a new compressor, the shops had closed because of the rain. The next day he could not come because his motorbike slipped and crashed on Shara-e-Faisal. Will K-Electric cook the food and purchase the fish, mince meat, parathas and sausages and soups which had rotted in the fridge freezer?

These are just two kinds of common expenses incurred by power consumers in Karachi. There are hundreds of such complaints, thousands actually. Ask anybody, they will tell you what the breakdown, the power surge or the fluctuation had cost them. There is probably no consumer who did not suffer. If there is a strike economists calculate the monetary loss which runs in billions. Why has not anyone done a calculation of the loss incurred by power consumers when power supply matched with rainfall strands the whole city?