| February 9, 2002 | Saturday | Ziqa’ad 25, 1422 |
No point in having a Khabarnama: TV REVIEW
CORRUPTION is endemic in so many features of our life that nobody is surprised when a new case or some cases of corruption suddenly hit the eye.
Few institutions are free from this lethal virus. Going by recent revelations, one would be forced to conclude that Karachi Electric Supply Corporation, the KESC, takes the cake in the corruption stakes.
Among the many unlovely aspects of this public service, note the fact that 3.5 million ‘kunda’ connections exist in Karachi and the KESC is not overly bothered. And the KESC is not alone. Also featuring in this dark drama is a 257 strong Army Monitoring Team. According to knowledgeable people in and around the KESC this public service has arrears running very close to one billion rupees.
As far as the average KESC consumer is concerned, if the monthly bill is not cleared on time — and in full — the power supply will be discontinued, mostly without the courtesy of a reminder or warning. This discipline ensures that the bills are promptly paid. In any case, there is no room for clients that fail to pay as per the KESC demand. Even when the bill is manifestly inflated, pay first and ask for mercy later.
When this be the discipline, one can only wonder how the KESC has around one billion rupees in arrears. Who are these parties that owe the KESC this mountain of debt? It is said that during the last 12 months or so the extra effort to collect arrears has barely touched the 40 per cent mark. In other words, more than 60 per cent of the arrears remain to be carried forward. Meanwhile, fresh arrears may have been accumulated.
What passes comprehension is the failure of the KESC to collect its genuine dues. Is there no legal remedy? One cannot believe that the law is helpless in a case like this. Even if the legal remedy has proved ineffective, let it be stated for the information of the public. Failure to clear an obvious obligation to pay for a public service should be an offence in the eyes of law and there ought to be a punishment for it.
In this standing scandal the more worrying feature is the presence of the Army. A strong Monitoring Team in uniform is supposed to be helping the KESC recover its dues. Going by the recovery figure, around 33 per cent, one cannot help feeling far from impressed. There is the police. It is in turn supplemented and supported by the Rangers at the service of the KESC. On top of this formidable line-up there is the Army Monitoring Team. With this panoply of state power, the KESC is cutting such a sorry figure. This is something close to an enigma and a miracle rolled into one.
Every time the KESC tries to wash its unclean linen in public there is the litany of the ‘kunda’ connections. This time the figure rolled out is above 3.5 million. Is this credible? The total population of Karachi is said to be something like 13.5 million. This should mean that there are some 2.5 million households, working out at five persons per household. How does one explain the existence of more ‘kunda’ connections than possible domestic connections?
It should be understood that the much-maligned ‘kunda’ connections are in the shantytowns. Houses in these poor localities have no power-guzzling facilities like air conditioners, freezers, pressing irons and the like.
On an average, a house in the poorer localities would perhaps have three light points and, may be, a couple of fans. Even if these consumers are stealing the KESC’s power, how much can they possibly steal or store?
From what has come to be known, it would appear that there is something altogether fishy and sinister about the KESC’s woes. If it is true that its unpaid bills amount to around one billion, a reasonable suspicion is that there is an in-house conspiracy. First of all, it is absolutely impossible that there should be so many ‘Kunda’ connections without active collusion, indeed encouragement, from the KESC field staff.
Would somebody please explain how some so many unauthorized outlets in the city and the poor KESC is utterly unable to do anything to combat this colossal theft in broad daylight? This story becomes vastly more uncomfortable when one is reminded of the strivings of the Army Monitoring Teams out in the field assisting the KESC. It would of course be uncharitable to jump to indelicate conclusions.
However, there is hardly any escape from the fear that such close association between a chronically inefficient (if not deeply corrupt) institution and the Army personnel is not in the best interests of the Army itself. If the KESC case is so completely hopeless, the better line for the Army authorities is to ease the Monitoring Teams out of this mess.
Let the KESC learn to do its job. Why should the Army personnel be exposed to the contagion that has brought the KESC to this pass? Apparently, the kind of monitoring being done by the Army personnel is not quite the right or adequately effective medicine for the malaise inside the KESC. What is most probably needed is a thorough purge within the KESC. —A.B.S.
LET’s face it. How many of us really watch the nine o’ clock Khabarnama? I mean yes, if Musharraf has said something important, some of us might want to watch PTV news. But given his importance these days, it would probably be carried by all the foreign channels. The test of a news channel is that it should carry the news the people want most to listen to. A good example of this is the on-going abduction/disappearance saga of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. All the action is happening in Pakistan, specifically in Karachi, and a bit in Lahore, but how many Pakistanis turn to Khabarnama if they want the latest update on this. This in an nutshell should tell us that Khabarnama really is a most redundant programme because we cannot even use the fact that a breaking story happens in our own backyard to out-perform other news channels.
No one really wants to watch the daily ‘engagements’ of various governors, federal ministers or provincial ministers unless, of course, you might know someone in the footage being shown. Or if you are a journalist who has to confirm where a minister went or what he or she said at a particular time or place. In some cases, the footage of important foreign visitors to Pakistan can be important since it becomes part of the record and can be referred to by journalists or newspaper writers.
Other than that most people are pretty tired of watching the daily zulm aur tashaddud (cruelty and violence) in Jammu and Kashmir, which the so-called Kashmir Media Service (no prize for guessing where they get their information from) never tires of informing Pakistan Television.
Then, of course, you have the occasional reports done by PTV’s new breed of ‘investigative’ reporters. This is similar to a newspaper doing a feature story, and the idea is that things which have a human angle to them might be of interest to audience. After all, such programming is one of the stronger points of channels like BBC World. Unfortunately, PTV is a different ball-game altogether. Most of the ‘investigative’ reports on Khabarnama are thinly-veiled (not to mention bad) attempts at showing just how good the government departments are. If something is criticized, say the traffic police, the criticism is too vague and general. In any case, people in influential positions are never really criticized and are generally given free publicity. The reporter innocently asks questions like: “So what do you thing should be done now...?” This gives them the chance to hold forth. PTV executives might think that a lot of Pakistanis actually watch Khabarnama. But that’s probably because many do not have an alternative, especially in the rural areas and smaller towns, and because Indian channels are still banned. Even other parts of Khabarnama, the sports news and the weather bulletin, are most shoddily presented. Yes, the anchors for the sports news at least get the right pronunciations of foreign sports people but the bottom-line is that the coverage is terrible. For example, one can never see all the dismissals during a day’s play for a test match in which even Pakistan is one of the teams. As for the weather, more cities are represented but the temperatures come for not more than two seconds (this isn’t an exaggeration and skeptics are welcome to check this for themselves). So one might as well not have them at all.
Realistically speaking, the 30 to 40 minute long Khabarnama that is broadcast on PTV every night at nine could easily be reduced to between five and ten minutes. Instead of having it once at nine, it could be shown more frequently, perhaps three of four times. PTV must have spent quite a bit on adverts in the past couple of weeks in the national newspapers, asking the people to send in their preference on whether Khabarnama should be telecast from at 9pm or at 7 and 10pm. Presumably, the pressure is coming from commercial considerations because having two new bulletins way would allow prime time to run for three hours instead of the current two. Such a solution, — that is, simply changing the time, ignores the more pressing need improving the content of the Khabarnama (whatever the format and time). Better still, let’s not have one at all. —OMAR R QURAISHI