Power woes

ENERGY

“If we were allowed to do our job freely then we would have overcome electricity crisis in the country.”

The recent remark by railways minister Khawaja Saad Rafique of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (N) at a public meeting in Lahore, says it all about the power supply situation in the country and what lies ahead in the coming months.

The summer has not fully set in but reports are pouring in from every part of the country, particularly rural areas, that the monster of loadshedding is again rearing its head.

After coming into power, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League had vowed to ensure zero loadshedding in the country when it would bow out at the expiry of its tenure.

But with just two months short of the end of its five year term, the official documents reveal that loadshedding is far from over.

Power cuts ranging from two to 16 hours still exist in 40 percent of the feeders in the country.

The government officials, however, claim that the loadshedding in these areas is not because of any shortage of electricity. Rather, they say these areas have to face power cuts proportionate to the power theft reported in these areas. They say around 60 percent of the feeders are being run without any loadshedding.

Under the government policy, areas whose feeders report less than 10 percent pilferage would have uninterrupted power supply throughout.

However, there are growing fears that as the weather would turn hot the power cuts would also become more intense as people in many areas where power theft and line losses are minimum, are now also complaining about increasing loadshedding.

Moreover, delay in the commissioning of several power projects add to fears that the power supply situation would deteriorate in the coming weeks and months.

The government has been making claims of ending the loadshedding by the end of last year on the basis of expectations that many of power projects would come on line by the deadline set by it.

But several of them could not meet the deadline.

For example, the government had expected that the three RLNG-based power plants would come on stream by the end of 2017 that would have added 3,600 megawatt of electricity into the national grid that would go a long way in mitigating power shortages.

But now there are fears that that objective could hardly be achieve even by the middle of the year.

What are the reasons for government’s failure to meet its promises?

Many industry officials believe that the government did not adopt a holistic approach to address the energy crisis of the country. Rather it adopted “fire-fighting” approach whereby it tried to cure the symptoms instead of addressing the real causes of this malaise.

The government throughout its tenure focused its attention on inaugurating big-ticket projects in an effort to generate more electricity but failed to take any concrete steps to overhaul or at least rectify the creaky power distribution and transmission system which has been one of the major causes of the power crisis in the country.

In Pakistan, traditionally power pilferage as well as transmission losses have been bigger problems than power generation. Like its predecessors, the existing government has also avoided to tackle these underlying problems of the energy sector.

Moreover, the government had planned to privatize power generation and distribution companies as part of the efforts to improve their efficiencies and check rampant corruption in these companies but those efforts were largely failed partly because of opposition of political parties to the privatization process.

Circular debt was another major long-running problem afflicting power sector. After coming into power, the government paid off Rs480 billion accumulated by the PPP government with a promise that it would not let this problem to recur but it is unfortunate that the present government has piled up record circular debt of Rs920 billion well ahead of expiry of its tenure.

The de facto finance minister Miftah Ismail has claimed that the government has drawn up a strategy to deal with the circular debt issue. However, so far there is no clue about what this would be.

At a time when government is already facing tremendous pressure to meet its external liabilities in order to avoid balance of payment crisis, the question that how it would tackle the circular debt issue is mind-boggling.

Political observers say any deterioration in the power supplies during summer season would expose embattled PML-N government to more challenges as it is already embroiled in legal and political battles over corruption cases against its supermo Nawaz Sharif.

However, critics say the ruling party would try to cover up its shortcomings like failure to end loadshedding by playing victimhood card.

The former prime minister in his public meetings has already been telling his supporters that his ouster has stirred a political turmoil in the country which is adversely affecting economy of the country. During the election campaign, power crisis is expected to again figure as a major issue with PML-N trying to capitalize on its efforts to minimize the loadshedding and will blame its opponents for creating hurdles in its efforts to end this crisis altogether.

The opposition on the other hand would try to convince the voters that the PML-N had failed to fulfill its promises despite lapse of five years.

From now onward, the power crisis has been rendered as a political issue until elections are held and a new government comes into power. Though power shortages have been lessoned to a large extent but the next elected government has to make more efforts to tackle this crisis.

It would be interesting to see whether the next government would succeed in addressing the real problems of the energy sector or like its predecessors would succumbed to political pressures and compromises.

But our rulers and policy makers should keep in mind that there are no quick fixes and they have to take bold and concerted measures to fix the crippling energy crisis failing which these problems would keep recurring.

The writer is a senior journalist based in Islamabad