While Power Minister Awais Leghari held a press conference to defend the federal government’s present policy of carrying out loadshedding on feeders which did not pay their bills, National Electric Power Regulatory Authority Chairman Waseem Mukhtar said that the policy was illegal, and required the government make amendments in the Act. At the moment, NEPRA insists that power Distribution Companies which carry out so-called revenue-based loadshedding are acting illegally, and are being fined, including Rs 50 million each slapped on five DISCOS in April. On the other hand, Mr Leghari insisted that revenue-based loadshedding was necessary to prevent the circular debt from growing Rs 1.2 trillion a year, and thus leading to further hikes in the electricity tariff.
There are two issues which need to be teased apart. First, the need to prevent electricity theft, and second, why the government needs to appear all tough and macho on this issue. The DISCOs are carrying out this revenue-based loadshedding at the height of the hot weather, thereby subjecting consumers to the heat irrespective of whether they have paid their bills or not. What the DISCOs will not do is reduce their line losses, or take any action to prevent that theft. Why should they? They have got Mr Leghari to engage in tigerish defence of policies that can only be described as collective punishment, one of the worst aspects of the British Raj, when an entire tribe was punished for the felonies of a single individual. That system was only recently abolished in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Interestingly, that approach has been revived at the behest of the IMF, an institution which has time and again shown its neo-colonialist nature, with the government trying to appear tough because it is negotiating a new package with it.
As with the question to Mr Leghari about solar power, the whole affair seems to reflect the IMF’s touching desire to help protect a sector on which the sun is setting: Big Power fuelled by Big Oil, huge behemoths of organizations, suppling power generated from fossil fuels emitting greenhouse gases with gusto. This is the reason for the attempts to hold back the switch to renewables, like solar, wind or hydel, on the excuse of paying the circular debt. While consumers are adopting more environmentally friendly methods for purely economic reasons, the government is not forcing the DISCOs to adapt to times where pollution is not just unacceptable, but a crime.
