It may have stopped raining in Karachi but the saga is far from over. Streets vanished, cars floated, drains overflowed. In just three days, more than 200 millimetres of rain fell, 163.5 millimetres in a single day near the airport, the heaviest daily rainfall since 1979. At least 10 to 18 people died in the city, depending on which official tally you read, including drownings, collapsing walls, and electrocution.
And then the other disaster began. The lights went out. Gulistan-e-Jauhar, Surjani Town, Moinabad, Safora Goth; whole neighbourhoods sat in darkness for two to three days. Residents poured onto the streets, blocking University Road, Tipu Sultan Road, Liaquat Market and Malir, staging sit-ins outside K-Electric offices. In Shah Faisal Colony, two brothers, Siraj and Murad, were electrocuted by a fallen cable; their father filed a police case of manslaughter against K-Electric. K-Electric insists it has invested heavily. Its filings and press releases boast of more than USD 4 billion invested since 2005, with another PKR 484 billion transmission-and-distribution plan approved for 2024-30. Management regularly talks of “modernisation” and “resilience.”
With over 20 million people, Karachi is Pakistan’s economic engine.
But the evidence on the ground is more convincing. K-Electric admitted that 2,100 feeders went down in the latest rains. A spokesperson said that “most” were restored quickly and that only 40 remained affected by waterlogging. Still, those of us living through the ordeal have a different story to tell: in Gulistan-e-Jauhar, entire blocks sat powerless for three straight days. Protesters in Model Colony and Bostan Society said they had logged repeated complaints without response. For all of us, and as should be for the national media, the question is simple: where have the billions gone?
Outside monsoon season, parts of Karachi still suffer 8-12-hour daily outages. In May 2025, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) warned K-Electric over “excessive and persistent” load-shedding, explicitly citing outages above 12 hours. It was hardly the first reprimand. In 2019, NEPRA fined K-Electric Rs50 million for 19 electrocution deaths during the rains. In 2020, the regulator fined the utility Rs200 million for excessive load-shedding. Yet two decades after privatisation, little has changed. Why? K-Electric remains a vertically integrated monopoly in Karachi’s service area. There is no competition, no alternative supplier. It answers to shareholders and, in theory, to the regulator. In practice, public anger burns out faster than candle wax, and regulators issue warnings that rarely translate into structural reform.
Ask the families in North Nazimabad or Orangi whether capacity matters when the transformer outside their lane shorts at the first drizzle. Accountability in Pakistan usually means a strongly worded statement, not enforceable consequences. That is why this cycle repeats.
Whether the office-bearers like it or not, we need a serious debate about competition, distributed generation, or partial renationalisation. And more importantly, a recognition that Karachi is not just another city. With over 20 million people, it is Pakistan’s economic engine. Leaving it powerless every monsoon is a national liability. Nothing less. The tragedy is how familiar this all feels. The floods come, the lights go, the people protest, K-Electric promises, and the government “takes notice.” The sun returns, the anger fades, and the city waits for the next storm. Until accountability is made real, until monopoly is broken and until these billions are explained and audited, nothing will change. Karachi will drown again. The lights will go out again. And the city that powers Pakistan will remain powerless in its own hour of need.
The writer is an ordinary Karachiite who loves his city more than anything.