As rain continued to lash Lahore on Wednesday, many localities suffered a major electricity breakdown. Soon after the rain, electricity went off. It has become a rule in the city that the people cannot enjoy the rain and an uninterrupted power supply at the same time. One has to be absent, otherwise you are not living in Lahore. Irrespective of winter or summer, there seems no end in sight to the energy crisis. Lately, it has been announced by the concerned authorities that citizens would have to face additional power outages consisting of three to four hours due to the closure of a 500kv transmission line to connect the newly-built 1,320MW Sahiwal Coal Power plant with the national grid.
Either it is the replacement of transmission lines or the connection of new grids, the concerned authorities have failed to rectify the system failures completely. Irregular breakdowns continue to hit various urban areas off and on. Although the duration of power breakdowns is lesser this year compared to the previous year, yet the genie of load-shedding is still haunting the masses. The PML-N government deserves appreciation for making efforts to decrease the duration of load-shedding however, a lot more needs to be done to resolve the crisis once and for fall. Ironically in this century when the utility of electricity is easily available in other developed states, Pakistanis still wait for the news about the curtailment or end of load-shedding. Despite the fact that the use of electricity is less in winter, citizens are still facing power outages. The repeated power failures have already affected industrial and manufacturing units across the country. There are various reasons behind the less production of electricity in Pakistan, which include financial constraints, lack of new power projects, raising burden of circular debt, poor electricity production, power theft, unfair distribution of electricity and non-payment of electricity bills. The non-recovery of bills by the power distribution companies is stated to be the root cause of the crisis. There is a need to rectify all problems one by one. Until the root causes of the crisis are removed, the situation is unlikely to improve.
Presently, the government is only focusing on increasing power generation while it is making no investment to improve the decades-old, rusty national grid and related power infrastructure, which is vulnerable to collapse at any time. The government needs to take concrete steps for the rectification of the root causes to rid the country of this energy crisis already crippling its economy. It should be the government’s priority to upgrade the national grid and transmission lines. Induction of technical manpower and investment in power-related infrastructure should be ensured especially in the hydropower generation sector. At present, Pakistan’s power generation mostly relies on thermal power plants that produce almost 65 percent electricity. But the cost of this electricity is very high because thermal power plants are run on furnace and diesel oil. Government is working on a number of projects, including coal-based, hydropower and solar, across the country with Chinese assistance, but it will take time to complete these projects. It is hoped that the incumbent government would fulfill its commitment of ridding the country of energy crisis before the end of its term.*