The incumbent government has all along been taking credit for making the curse of power load-shedding a thing of the past but all claims proved hollow as the system could not withstand a modest challenge thrown by the ongoing conflict in the Gulf. What a pity that people of Pakistan are being subjected to the worst kind of power outages despite the fact that the country has a generation capacity of 45,000MW against a peak demand of 20,000MW of electricity.
Minister for Power Sardar Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari tried to justify the outages attributing them to disruption of LNG and reduced hydro-power generation but he completely failed to make a case as consumers faced load-shedding during day-time as well when solar input from rooftops compensated for the loss of generation capacity caused by LNG shortage and dynamics of hydel power. Similarly, the government notified load-shedding of 2.25 hours daily but practically it was up to 16 hours daily and in view of the deteriorating situation and strong reaction of the people, the Minister had to acknowledge outages to the tune of 7 to 8 hours. It is an irony that Pakistan is shining globally because of its diplomatic stature but internally the country has been pushed into darkness due to flawed policies and lack of vision. What a shame that despite massive investments in the power sector, especially the generation capacity, the spectre of load-shedding is back to haunt people of Pakistan, inflicting serious harm on families as well as almost every sector of the economy. There is something seriously wrong with the power sector that needs to be thoroughly looked into by the top leadership of the country as on the one hand we talk about provision of relief to masses and growth and on the other hand sustained supply of electricity remains a far off cry. There is a perception that despite claims of reforms, the Government is still poised to safeguard the interests of IPPs at the cost of ordinary consumers. Experts also argue that the country averted an alarming scenario in the backdrop of the Iran war mainly because of the contribution of solar power to the national grid but the policy-makers have adopted an anti-solar posture to protect vested interests. Once the regional situation normalizes, the leadership of the country ought to focus on the economy, which is still in shambles and cannot be run without foreign injections. The menace of load-shedding and the episode of Maersk’s investment (its proposed $2 billion investment in Pakistan’s port infrastructure faces uncertainty due to bureaucratic delays, economic instability and high operational risks, despite official commitments for partnership) highlight contradictions in policies, verbose and actions, which need to be addressed without further delay.
