| April 27, 2002 | Saturday | Safar 13, 1423 |
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Controversial decisions
Doctors’ strike — again
THE government has taken another step in the direction of Wapda’s corporatization and commercialization by distributing the debt burden of the Authority among its various corporate entities. The decision would in due course of time enable these units to become independent organizations capable of functioning on their own and out of Wapda’s umbrella. The loans would be transferred to corporate entities on the same terms and conditions as given in the original loan agreements signed between the Water and Power Development Authority and the lenders. This step should immediately cause most of the Wapda loans to disappear from its books, except the burden of the bonds. The repayment of the bonds would, however, continue to remain the responsibility of the Authority which it would meet by getting the corporate entities to refund periodically their share of the bond resources along with profits. Appropriately, a special back-to-back arrangement for bonds would be executed with the corporate entities to reflect debt service liabilities of these bonds in their books. However, no such arrangement would be available for these entities on their share of other loans. They would be directly responsible to the lenders for debt servicing.
In order to bring improvement on a long-term and sustainable basis in Wapda’s financial, operational and management tiers the Area Electricity Boards have already been restructured into eight independent power distribution companies (Discos), one each in Peshawar, Islamabad, Gujranwala, Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan, Quetta and Hyderabad; three power generation companies (Gencos) have been set up, one at Jamshoro, one at Guddo and another in Multan with independent management, and a national transmission and dispatch company, too, has been established. All these entities are being corporatized under the management of the Pakistan Electric Power Company. Ultimately, the Discos and Gencos will be privatized. One could not but agree with the idea that a restructuring of Wapda’s power wing into separate corporations is essential and advantageous since it would establish distinct asset blocks to be operated autonomously, and enable a shift towards business orientation with the introduction of commercial practices. The philosophy behind the decision — that the primary focus of each corporate entity should be customer satisfaction and profit — is sound.
Under the competitive set-up of the restructured power sector, there is likely to be no room for the social subsidies that are currently a part of, and are hidden in, Wapda’s united accounts. The subsidies being provided by the government through Wapda revenues are expected to be identified, quantified, and transparent for the government to pay for the services rendered by the independent corporatized entities. However, it is not very clear how those distribution companies located in Quetta, Peshawar and Hyderabad — whose tariff rates would shoot up to about Rs. 10-12 once the subsidies are removed — would be helped in distributing power to their consumers at the national rates. If the other five distribution companies which are already in profit are made to pay for the losses suffered by the losing companies, the consumers in the areas where profit-making units are located would surely complain and may even demand that the profit margins of these companies be curtailed to reasonable levels. One would like to know how the government is planning to meet this challenge while going ahead with its plans for Wapda’s corporatization and commercialization.
WHILE a heated debate rages over the constitutional propriety of the April 30 referendum, the government has issued an order that is bound to create further controversy regarding the procedural aspects of the exercise. The decision to waive the condition requiring a citizen to show his National Identity Card for casting a vote is likely to be viewed with deep suspicion. The waiver was announced on Thursday through an amendment in the April 9 Referendum Order 2002. The amendment is retrospectively deemed to have come into effect on April 9. Under the amendment, a long list of alternative documents will now be allowed as substitutes to those voters who do not possess NICs. These include passports, driving licences, service cards and certificates from lecturers and heads of educational institutions. Most controversial of all is the proviso that allows Nazims, Naib Nazims and government officers of grade 17 and above to hand out certificates to enable a citizen to cast his vote. Viewed charitably, the new concessions will enable a large number of otherwise disenfranchised persons to vote on April 30. However, the new rules are open to serious abuse and could well lead to rigging.
Government officials, by the very nature of their jobs, will have little option but to be compliant. Meanwhile, most Nazims and Naib Nazims are already under intense pressure to support the referendum and rally their supporters to the cause. Giving these two groups the right to issue certificates to intending voters is not the wisest of moves for a government that insists that the process will be transparent. Already, the decision to allow voters the right to vote at any polling station of their choice has come under considerable criticism. The government’s subsequent announcement that polling stations will be set up in all kinds of public places is another highly controversial decision. The authorities risk undermining the credibility of the referendum if they get carried away in their zeal to ensure a massive turnout on polling day.
THE murder last week of Dr Amir Muavia, a urologist at Karachi’s Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, seemed to have been the proverbial last straw on the camel’s back. Despite official pronouncements, repeated ad nauseum by police and government officials, targeted killings of doctors have not ended, nor have any of their killers been arrested. Perhaps, the patience of the doctors working at the JPMC — the urologist was a very popular man — gave way and a spontaneous outburst against the murder led to three days of protest. But the course of action followed by the doctors is not one that will arouse sympathy for what otherwise is a just cause. In the three days that the doctors at the JPMC — one of Karachi’s three main government hospitals — were on strike, thousands of patients were left unattended. Numerous cases have surfaced of people needing urgent medical attention being brought to the hospital only to find that there was no doctor on call.
One would like to ask the protesting doctors whether their grief over their lost colleague in any way legitimizes leaving thousands of patients, mostly poor and destitute, unattended. Perhaps, the wiser course of action would have been to go on a token strike -— which is what the doctors have decided upon as of Friday, saying that they were doing this to end the suffering experienced by the patients. It would have been much better had they realized a bit earlier the pain and inconvenience their actions had caused to their patients. All this in no way excuses the government and the law enforcement agencies from the severe criticism they deserve for failing to curb this mindless violence. The police’s reaction to all this — usually that the murders are being “investigated” and the killers will be “apprehended soon” — might have been more digestible were it not the fact that close to 90 doctors have been murdered in Karachi and to date not one of the killers has been brought to justice. Surely, it is time the authorities caught some of the perpetrators of these heinous acts.