A nuisance called ‘load shedding’
‘Kandlelight King Khitaab’
This is to announce an editor’s reward of a lifetime subscription of The Post, and the title of 'Kandlelight King' to the scientist who invents a television set that operates solely on candlelight.
In the words of our editor, “Kasam se, load-shedding ho gayi hai Kahaani ghar ghar ki. Aik waqt tha jab bijli thi Kabhi sautan, Kabhi saheli. Ab to Kayamat aa gayi hai! Aise chalta raha tou kya hoga Kumkum ka?!”
It is also hereby announced that the employees of The Post have pooled in a sum of $ 100,000 to the award, to restore their editor to his much needed Wapda-deprived Ektaa Kapoor-induced stupor.
Humour aside, the gravity of the issue of electric failures cannot be reduced to merely missing one’s favourite TV programmes. Such petty issues are nothing as compared to the wide gamut of real world losses that various people are suffering on a daily basis due to the inadequacy of electricity supply. Load shedding is on the rise with each passing day, which has added to the woes of the already miserable citizens. There have been more than a hundred deaths due to extreme heat this summer, and Wapda did not help by giving people the electricity blues. Frequent, unannounced power outages throughout the day have become part of the daily routine. The irony is that people are paying inflated electricity bills for one of the poorest services in the world. This has led to many protests all over the country, including some violent ones in Karachi, Hyderabad, Sargodha, Gujjar Khan and some other cities.
If one walks by the Lahore canal on any given day in the summers, one would find hundreds of people taking a dip in it. The reason why these people opt for the contaminated water of the canal is because they have no other alternative to brave the heat. This contaminated water is their only solace. One cannot even begin to think of how many diseases are spread through the canal water. If only there was enough electricity, not many would be tempted to swim in such bad conditions.
Patients in various hospitals are suffering, especially government hospitals, where generators are found in as much quantity as gold is found in our country. It is hard to imagine how those poor patients would be suffering in the scorching heat, without even fans to give them some air for breathing. Not only is it a nuisance for government-run hospitals, but the frequent power outages have created serious problems for the private hospitals as well as it has caused hindrance in providing emergency treatment to patients.
Another major dilemma is that of students. Most of the board examinations take place in summer and load shedding has cost good grades to many. When there is no electricity, how is one supposed to concentrate on one’s studies and prepare for the examination? Not only that, during the sweltering heat when the students are taking these examinations and the power goes out, many are unable to complete their papers. This is not only the loss of students, but losing out on these bright children is losing out on our future.
Every section of the community has suffered due to frequent power cuts. The business community has claimed that the intermittent power outages have created serious problems for the food storage industry, especially frozen food and ice creams that require consistently cold temperatures to preserve them for a longer duration. This has resulted in causing heavy losses to these businesses. The industries/mills running on electricity have to be shut down for hours, resulting in reduction in export potential. The loss of industrial output due to load shedding costs the country billions of rupees every year.
The water and power ministry officials say that extensive use of electrical appliances such as refrigerators, deep freezers, air conditioners and ceiling fans in urban and rural areas had overburdened the electricity supply system and led to frequent power outages. Although one may accept the fact that the demand has increased, it was inevitable with the unprecedented growth of population, per capita income and rapid urbanisation. People’s purchasing power has increased, and so has the demand for utilities as people have acquired a taste for comfort with their rising incomes.
What one fails to understand is why the government and Wapda had been napping during all these years. It is not as if these facts have caught them unawares, and this increase in demand has popped out of the blue. With the changing weather around the world, increase in heat was predicted years ago. Pakistan is already in a region where in these months we have extremely high temperatures every year, so why the government and Wapda failed to plan ahead boggles the mind. The fault is not entirely Wapda’s. It is the fault of several governments, including the present one, who have been slow in serving the public and quick in reaping their own political benefits from the Kalabagh Dam (KBD) rhetoric. When every government has known that it is impossible to build the KBD due to political reasons, then why did they keep trumpeting the same horn in every election? Just to secure their votebank. These successive governments turned a deaf ear to all the surveys done and the media reports that it was essential to build large reservoirs, and options other than KBD should be looked at. But no government was willing to listen, as no government has ever truly cared for the people. Even the present government went on a KBD-building campaign, which was thrown back in their faces and they had to divert to building the Bhasha Dam. If only they had listened to the people and not wasted so much time on mission impossible. Without wasting any more time, the government should start building more reservoirs. And now that the Alternative Energy Development Board (AEDB) has come up with some concrete projects, it should seek to tap other energy sources such as solar, wind, water/tidal, bio-fuels, hydrogen, coal, gas, nuclear and other alternative fuels.
The protests in Karachi are nothing but a minuscule evidence of the growing impatience among the population. With every coming year, the protests on various issues have started to become more and more violent, showing the level of discontent and dissatisfaction over the current policies and their inefficient implementation by the government. If we have learned anything from history, it is the power of public opinion. When the residents of a nation are suppressed to a degree that they cannot even fulfil their basic daily needs, they come out of their homes and overturn governments, usually in a revolution painted with the blood of the aristocracy. The French revolution in the 18th century, Russian revolution against the Czar in the early 20th century, the Iranian Islamic Revolution against Reza Shah Pahlavi in the mid-20th century were all triggered by the culmination of atrocities. Officials on privileged posts and modern day czars may continue to ignore the early indicators of such a possible revolution in Pakistan, but the way successive governments have been handling matters for political gains, it is only a matter of time when the consensus of resurgence and revolution reaches a critical mass and small pockets of resistance join arms to seek their rights with force. The outcome of such a reaction is like a ticking time bomb, waiting for a trigger. It would be very prudent for the government that it pauses and reflects on its inadequacies and tries its best to improve its public image. Without further ado, it should seriously start planning and building new water reservoirs to meet the needs of not only this generation but the next – for the proper functioning of a society cannot be achieved by just providing the bare minimum, but providing the optimum resources necessary for growth and development.
This is to announce an editor’s reward of a lifetime subscription of The Post, and the title of 'Kandlelight King' to the scientist who invents a television set that operates solely on candlelight.
In the words of our editor, “Kasam se, load-shedding ho gayi hai Kahaani ghar ghar ki. Aik waqt tha jab bijli thi Kabhi sautan, Kabhi saheli. Ab to Kayamat aa gayi hai! Aise chalta raha tou kya hoga Kumkum ka?!”
It is also hereby announced that the employees of The Post have pooled in a sum of $ 100,000 to the award, to restore their editor to his much needed Wapda-deprived Ektaa Kapoor-induced stupor.
Humour aside, the gravity of the issue of electric failures cannot be reduced to merely missing one’s favourite TV programmes. Such petty issues are nothing as compared to the wide gamut of real world losses that various people are suffering on a daily basis due to the inadequacy of electricity supply. Load shedding is on the rise with each passing day, which has added to the woes of the already miserable citizens. There have been more than a hundred deaths due to extreme heat this summer, and Wapda did not help by giving people the electricity blues. Frequent, unannounced power outages throughout the day have become part of the daily routine. The irony is that people are paying inflated electricity bills for one of the poorest services in the world. This has led to many protests all over the country, including some violent ones in Karachi, Hyderabad, Sargodha, Gujjar Khan and some other cities.
If one walks by the Lahore canal on any given day in the summers, one would find hundreds of people taking a dip in it. The reason why these people opt for the contaminated water of the canal is because they have no other alternative to brave the heat. This contaminated water is their only solace. One cannot even begin to think of how many diseases are spread through the canal water. If only there was enough electricity, not many would be tempted to swim in such bad conditions.
Patients in various hospitals are suffering, especially government hospitals, where generators are found in as much quantity as gold is found in our country. It is hard to imagine how those poor patients would be suffering in the scorching heat, without even fans to give them some air for breathing. Not only is it a nuisance for government-run hospitals, but the frequent power outages have created serious problems for the private hospitals as well as it has caused hindrance in providing emergency treatment to patients.
Another major dilemma is that of students. Most of the board examinations take place in summer and load shedding has cost good grades to many. When there is no electricity, how is one supposed to concentrate on one’s studies and prepare for the examination? Not only that, during the sweltering heat when the students are taking these examinations and the power goes out, many are unable to complete their papers. This is not only the loss of students, but losing out on these bright children is losing out on our future.
Every section of the community has suffered due to frequent power cuts. The business community has claimed that the intermittent power outages have created serious problems for the food storage industry, especially frozen food and ice creams that require consistently cold temperatures to preserve them for a longer duration. This has resulted in causing heavy losses to these businesses. The industries/mills running on electricity have to be shut down for hours, resulting in reduction in export potential. The loss of industrial output due to load shedding costs the country billions of rupees every year.
The water and power ministry officials say that extensive use of electrical appliances such as refrigerators, deep freezers, air conditioners and ceiling fans in urban and rural areas had overburdened the electricity supply system and led to frequent power outages. Although one may accept the fact that the demand has increased, it was inevitable with the unprecedented growth of population, per capita income and rapid urbanisation. People’s purchasing power has increased, and so has the demand for utilities as people have acquired a taste for comfort with their rising incomes.
What one fails to understand is why the government and Wapda had been napping during all these years. It is not as if these facts have caught them unawares, and this increase in demand has popped out of the blue. With the changing weather around the world, increase in heat was predicted years ago. Pakistan is already in a region where in these months we have extremely high temperatures every year, so why the government and Wapda failed to plan ahead boggles the mind. The fault is not entirely Wapda’s. It is the fault of several governments, including the present one, who have been slow in serving the public and quick in reaping their own political benefits from the Kalabagh Dam (KBD) rhetoric. When every government has known that it is impossible to build the KBD due to political reasons, then why did they keep trumpeting the same horn in every election? Just to secure their votebank. These successive governments turned a deaf ear to all the surveys done and the media reports that it was essential to build large reservoirs, and options other than KBD should be looked at. But no government was willing to listen, as no government has ever truly cared for the people. Even the present government went on a KBD-building campaign, which was thrown back in their faces and they had to divert to building the Bhasha Dam. If only they had listened to the people and not wasted so much time on mission impossible. Without wasting any more time, the government should start building more reservoirs. And now that the Alternative Energy Development Board (AEDB) has come up with some concrete projects, it should seek to tap other energy sources such as solar, wind, water/tidal, bio-fuels, hydrogen, coal, gas, nuclear and other alternative fuels.
The protests in Karachi are nothing but a minuscule evidence of the growing impatience among the population. With every coming year, the protests on various issues have started to become more and more violent, showing the level of discontent and dissatisfaction over the current policies and their inefficient implementation by the government. If we have learned anything from history, it is the power of public opinion. When the residents of a nation are suppressed to a degree that they cannot even fulfil their basic daily needs, they come out of their homes and overturn governments, usually in a revolution painted with the blood of the aristocracy. The French revolution in the 18th century, Russian revolution against the Czar in the early 20th century, the Iranian Islamic Revolution against Reza Shah Pahlavi in the mid-20th century were all triggered by the culmination of atrocities. Officials on privileged posts and modern day czars may continue to ignore the early indicators of such a possible revolution in Pakistan, but the way successive governments have been handling matters for political gains, it is only a matter of time when the consensus of resurgence and revolution reaches a critical mass and small pockets of resistance join arms to seek their rights with force. The outcome of such a reaction is like a ticking time bomb, waiting for a trigger. It would be very prudent for the government that it pauses and reflects on its inadequacies and tries its best to improve its public image. Without further ado, it should seriously start planning and building new water reservoirs to meet the needs of not only this generation but the next – for the proper functioning of a society cannot be achieved by just providing the bare minimum, but providing the optimum resources necessary for growth and development.
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