Karachi’s power woes

Relief from power outages is not one of the blessings we can look forward to in the month of Ramazan but the massive power outage that hit Karachi on the first day of the month of fasting was a rather grim reminder of the issues plaguing the country’s power sector. Over half of Karachi was plunged into darkness two hours before Sehri with the outages adversely affecting water supply and making for a particularly bad start to Karachi residents’ first fast. With the country already in the midst of a heatwave and temperatures spiralling above 40 degree Celsius, power outages magnify people’s misery to unbearable proportions. The last heatwave in Karachi also came during Ramazan and claimed almost a thousand lives. Sunday’s outage came after a problem in the distribution system, when the 500-KV Jamshoro line tripped. This is not an unusual occurrence. It is the fourth time in the current year that a major transmission line into Karachi has tripped to cause such a major power breakdown.

This brings us to the fact that much of the talk of ending power outages is just that – talk. Serious issues in the power sector have not been tackled. The problems in the distribution system are the product of an outdated grid system and old transmission lines, which need a serious upgrade. But upgrading the transmission system, one of the major factors behind the kind of power breakdowns Karachi saw on Sunday, does not make headlines like the announcement of a new power plant. This has skewed the government’s approach to the power crisis. If 15,000MW of new generation capacity is to be added to the grid as promised by the federal government, the same capacity will need to be added to the transmission system. Karachi is a more specific example of the failure of the overall power sector policy. K-Electric was privatised under the logic that the new private sector investors would be able to invest in improving the efficiency of the power production and distribution system. That assumed investment has not materialised and major issues continue to plague the generation and distribution networks. There are no emergency measures that can stop this episode from being repeated. There will be a need for planning that sets priorities straight. Till then, we may have to brace ourselves for a tough month ahead.