THE Government is struggling hard to come up to the expectations of the people as power sector woes refuse to go off the national radar. Some of the factors behind the all-time high electricity tariff owe their existence to the lip-service that the successive governments paid to them but the incumbent government cannot afford the luxury of mere sloganeering as resentment of the people has reached boiling point.
The directions that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif gave to the officials of the Power Ministry as well as provincial governments on Sunday to curb power theft are quite relevant in view of the huge magnitude of the country-wide theft and its impact on the honest consumers. Continuation of the massive theft for years is a reflection of the national failure, highlighting the inability of the State to take thieves and defaulters of dues to task. It is also a reality that corruption within the Discos and non-cooperation of the provincial governments are mainly to be blamed for the instance of theft as Discos understandably have no implementation force. The provinces have now been asked to assign police personnel and tehsildars for checking of illegal connections and taking action against those found involved in theft. The wholehearted cooperation of the provinces has the potential to make a difference and success of this campaign will obviate the need to jack up power tariff every now and then. In case of non-cooperation of any provincial government, the control of the respective Discos be transferred to that province without further delay. The remarks made by the Prime Minister while chairing a meeting on power sector issues also indicate that the Government was alive to the need of reducing line losses and improving the distribution system. As power tariff in Pakistan is one of the highest in the world, it is but natural for consumers to expect world class service as presently they witness many shutdowns on almost daily basis and dangerous fluctuation in voltage, damaging costly electrical and electronic goods. It is also a matter of shame that the dastardly practice of palm-greasing for electricity connections goes on unchecked despite availability of surplus power in the country.
