government office buildings, street lights and homes. That doesn’t mean that the government can place curfew times on all these places.
A much better way to go, one that should have been adopted years ago when the crisis first started, would be to develop a comprehensive plan to lower consumption by reducing wastage. Despite all the problems we face because of lack of electricity, we still do not have much regard for the preciousness of this resource. It is constantly being wasted through idly running appliances. We just look for cures like installing more and more generators which come with their own set of problems, rather than preventing the problem in the first place by being more prudent in the way we use electricity.
Rather than just implementing regulations during the summer the government needs to develop a year round austerity drive that we can all follow – one that is doable and has at least some measure of support by those it is going to be implemented on.
Pakistanis as a whole need to learn to take more responsibility for our problems. Successive governments have been unable to solve the energy crisis but it is not like we are helping much. This summer, when the designated loadshedding time ends and the power comes back on, maybe don’t turn on all the ACs, fans and lights immediately. We are citizens of a poor country in the middle of an economic struggle for survival. It’s about time we learned how to live here.
The writer is a businessstudies graduate fromsouthern Punjab.
Email: asna.ali90@ gmail.com
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