I returned from Pakistan in November, raging: “If I didn’t have family there I would never go back. There are better places to spend thousands of dollars and a month of my life.”
The reason for my rage was electrical “load shedding”. After sundown, Lahore would go absolutely, completely dark. You could stand on your balcony in the middle of Cantonment, Garden Town, or Gulberg, unable to see or hear anything but the moon and the stars. The silence was eerie, almost ominous.
This was not due to any Pakistani Green movement or new kind of silent protest, but to the simple fact that the country had no electricity to provide its citizens.
WAPDA, the government-owned electricity provider, had not paid the independent producers (IPPs) that generate electricity. After extended negotiations, the IPPs had decided to turn off the power plants and leave citizens to fend for themselves.
The streets were lit not by street lights but by headlights - of cars, motorcycles, and trucks all lost in the vast sea of darkness, each afraid to stray far from the vehicle in front of it. On Main Boulevard and Jail Road, all you could see was an almost continuous sea of dim shades of white light.
Once the power switch is forced off, life becomes amazingly primitive. For me, life in Lahore became a constant struggle to find a light source at night and to stay cool during the day.
After a few days of stumbling and mismanagement, the infamous WAPDA came up with a master plan. The electricity was turned on at odd hours and off at even hours - all day, all night seven days a week .
“What can you say about a country that has no electricity and clean water?” I griped to a friend after returning to Chicago. I had made up my mind. I was hurt to see Pakistan make a 180-degree turn back toward the Dark Ages. Or perhaps, over the last few years, I had begun expecting more for Pakistan. And then, almost accidentally, I picked up Thomas Friedman’s new book Hot, Flat, and Crowded.
Friedman frames the issue in global terms. “The World Bank estimates that roughly 1.6 billion people - one out of every four people on the planet - don’t have regular access to an electricity grid,” he writes. “Every night is a blackout for 1.6 billion people.”
Friedman calls this phenomenon energy poverty and the people energy haves and have-nots. Many factors play into energy poverty, including inefficient utilities and the inability to raise funds for massive power generation and grid projects. In sub-Saharan Africa, 75 percent of households have no access to electricity.
All these facts and figures gave me little comfort. Friedman helped me understand the problem in a global way, but I was not satisfied. Pakistan can destroy another country with its nukes, but it can’t deliver the power its citizens need to keep the lights on. There is something very wrong with this equation.
Within two weeks in Lahore, I was shocked to notice that I had become accepting of the fact that electricity was no longer a utility but a rare commodity. I downloaded the “Flashlight” application on my iPhone and used it regularly. Basheer, the family servant, was glad that I no longer yelled for him every time the light went out.
Like me, the entire country had adapted. Car mechanics had figured out how to rig a conversion kit for compressed natural gas (CNG) onto a power generator. These kits are commonly used to convert cars to CNG, which is one fifth the cost of gasoline. Now, many were connecting generators to the gas pipes at home and generating electricity by burning gas - at least until SSGC, the gas company, comes up with its own master plan.
Pakistan’s energy and electricity problem is complex but, whatever its reasons, it’s a great tragedy. GDP growth in nations is closely tied to infrastructure investments and availability of electricity. Investments in Pakistan’s grid infrastructure today will pay dividends only a decade from now. With its limited resources and massive population, Pakistan must adjust its priorities or suffer the consequences in an ever-flattening world.
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Well your right, the gas company has come up with its own master plan. They have started to shut down gas for a few hours every day, which combined with the shortage of petrol leaves people stranded in the middle of nowhere. The really shocking part is that the shortages although country-wide are significantly worse in the Punjab. I was discussing this with my chief reporter a few days ago and the only reason we could find for both shortages being worse in Punjab was the rivalry between the provincial government and the federal government. With each side trying to destabilize the others rule and control. The common man is stuck in the middle left hopeless and helpless, made to suffer the dark, the cold and the lack of mobility that comes with the shortages.
The shortage of petrol stems from the government trying to reduce the cost of petrol and in turn reducing the profit margin for major petrol suppliers. The suppliers have decided that they will not settle for a billion less and have reduced the amount of fuel. Which leads us to the main reason behind all of the shortages i.e the supply monopolies created by massive companies, all of which is done with the consent of senior officials in the federal government who have apparently been paid off or have stakes in the aforementioned companies.
However, to be fair in all of this. WAPDA, which is the only company that has license to supply electricity to the public is barely making ends meet. With an abundance of electricity theft and of course unpaid debts, WAPDA barely has any money left to pay the IPPs. But all of these problems would easily be remedied if smaller power companies were licensed to provide electricity to consumers directly. This would not only create a healthy competition but would also allow them to provide better services at a fraction of the cost.
The Pakistani government is of course turning a blind eye to this simple solution, preferring instead to blame previous regimes for the current crisis. The president who appears to be oblivious to the whole situation decided to hold a meeting on the crisis a month after people had started suffering 16 hours of darkness daily. President Zardri as expected held the meeting and demanded that the power companies pull out an extra 1,000 megawatts of power to reduce the suffering of people and left the details to everyone else......
The public is as expected staging protests, but it seems as though the Pakistani governments have become used to people rioting and demanding basic necessities and consider them to be a very minor nuisance.
So far as an economic crisis is concerned, the country has already suffered. Pakistan was on a steady path towards industrialization, but industries require power and thus a significant number of factories have been forced to close down as the limited amount of time they get power, along with an increase in the cost of that power, has stripped them of the ability to compete with others in the global market.
Where are the people in all of this? The people are left jobless, soon to be homeless and have been demoralized to a point where sever depression is leading to a significant increase in the number of suicides. All of the above coupled with the recent threat of war and accusations of terrorism have left the people desperate for a way out.
P.S while i was writing this my electricity was shut off twice with a 10 minute respite in between, during which i did not even bother to get up and turn on the light.
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