| May 13, 2002 | Monday | Safar 29, 1423 |
Neglected hidden treasure
Two referendums, one adviser
The Fallen Idol
Weaker or wiser?
The unlikely hero of the blast
STRIKE by the Government employees finally collapsed. The Secretariat Staff earlier ended the strike on Thursday while the Balochistan Labour Federation called off the strike unconditionally on Friday last. Several thousands employees of the Provincial Government have gone on strike since April 13 last demanding 40 per cent Utility Allowance. This category of employees was working in different government departments, autonomous bodies, City Government, Wasa and QDA. They all belong to grade 1 to 16.
A group of Secretariat employees concluded an agreement with the provincial government after getting 20 per cent Utility Allowance or raise in their salary. The other group rejected it and demanded 40 per cent as was granted to other government employees by the Government under Sardar Akhtar Mengal in 1997. Originally, the 40 per cent allowance, called the Non-Attractive Areas Allowance under the infamous One Unit or unified West Pakistan Government.
The then provincial government had given an incentive to the government employees to serve in remote areas of Balochistan and allowed 40 per cent Unattractive Areas Allowance. The purpose was to motivate the government employees to go to other districts of the province also and leave this provincial capital.
Sardar Akhtar Mengal, when in opposition, organised a long march in support of the government employees’ demand for 40 per cent raise in their pay for those serving in remote areas or other districts. When he came to power in 1997, he okayed the allowance for the employees working in 22 districts. But he excluded the provincial capital. The employees were demanding the same allowance for which they agitated also. Balochistan Labour Federation, with a sizable number of public servants, made it a trade union cause and joined the strike using its full force to keep the provincial government under pressure.
Initially, the political bosses of the provincial government were horrified with the strike and hurriedly tried to form a committee of provincial ministers to hold talks with the representatives of the government employees. The Chief Secretary and others opposed the idea and formed a committee of junior officials and later on he personally handled the case. One of the groups accepted the 20 per cent raise in their salary through the 20 per cent allowance. But other group insisted on 40 per cent allowance.
The officials argued that there were many allowances that are not admissible to government employees serving in remote areas. It included the House Rent and Conveyance Allowance. In brief, the government employees are getting 22 per cent more salary than the employees serving in other districts where the so-called Utility Allowance was admissible. The employees rejected the offer and continued their strike paralysing the Civil Secretariat and hampering the routine work of the officials. The officials were continuing the normal work. Some of them were found in a complete shock as there was no one to obey their orders or accept their dictates for a month. This scribe found nerves of the some senior officials shattered.
“There should be someone who should suggest to the provincial government to hold negotiations with the striking employees,” a senior official of Grade 19 implicitly proposed to this scribe during a routine visit to the Civil Secretariat. The strikers included Naib Qasids, junior and senior stenographers, clerks, assistants, sanitary workers and the gardeners.
Employees of City Government, Wasa and other Departments played havoc with the city life while the other employees paralysed the work of the provincial government. The sanitary workers, most of them members of the Balochistan Labour Federation, played the crucial role in forcing the people to feel the impact of strike. They suspended the garbage removal and filth was everywhere. The main roads were littered with dirt and filth making the life of the common people miserable even in their residential localities. A personal friend residing in the heart of the city complained that he and members of his family could not tolerate the foul smell even inside their residence. Since most of the drain lines are on surface and Quetta is still having the open sewerage system, all of them were overflowing. Even the storm water drains were also overflowing.
For about a month, the drain lines were not cleaned, the filth, dirt and rubbish material were not removed or lifted from the specified dustbins and huge garbage dumps were seen everywhere, mainly in the city centres. However, the City Government got Rs2.2 million from the provincial government to hire private sanitary workers and keep the city clean and protect it from a possible outbreak of epidemics, one insider of the City Government told this scribe. Hardly any private worker was seen lifting the garbage or cleaning the choked gutter lines. This scribe took a round of city centres for more than four to six hours daily but could not found the private sanitary workers cleaning the city. There were some people found cleaning the Prince Road section ending at the intersection with the Zarghoon Road.
It is the residential locality of the senior most officials of the provincial government, including the advocate-general and the Afghan Consulate in Quetta. It was first inundated with sewer water initially but later on overflow drained out and cleaned. However, some shopkeepers were found hiring the services of Afghan refugees in cleaning the choked gutter lines making the flow smooth. But late in the night, someone put stones in the lines and it was again overflowing.
The main reason for the collapse of the strike was the response of the jobless youth in applying for the posts fell vacant after sacking of strikers. Hundreds of people were found forming a huge and unending queue at the main entrance of the provincial secretariat submitting their documents. The strikers or champions of the Trade Union Movement did not expect such a big response from the army of jobless youth holding degrees to replace the strikers. The government advertised over 850 posts from Grade 1 to Grade 15 after sacking hundreds of employees. Since the replacement in tens of thousands was available, it caused worry and created a panic among the strikers compelling them to end their protest abruptly and presumably without any gain.
MIANWALI district, a neglected area of the Punjab, is rich in natural resources hidden in the Salt Range mountains which start from the south-east side of the district and enter the NWFP on the north-west.
The natural resources include uranium, iron ore, salt, salika sand, gypsum and limestone. And this hidden treasure is waiting to be explored on a high scale with modern skill to earn a handsome foreign exchange. Besides, several beautiful places in the district are a great attraction for the tourists, which can be developed with the assistance of the tourism department.
To find a picturesque historical lake, we had a drive of 25km from Mianwali on Rawalpindi-Mianwali Road. After passing through the Salt Range mountains, we found a beautiful lake known as Namal Lake spread over 5.5 sq km, in Namal Valley. This is the central place of Namal Valley and our old town named Namal is on its eastern side which still has a century-old rest house standing on the banks of Namal Lake. Once a picnic spot for the British officers, it is now altogether neglected by the department concerned.
In 1913, British engineers, to meet the scarcity of irrigation and drinking water, built a dam on this lake and from here they irrigated lands up to Mianwali city. But with the passage of time and construction of Thal Canal and installation of tubewells, its utility of water squeezed up to some limit. The gates of the dam are repaired by the irrigation department regularly but without enthusiasm. The hill torrents and rains fill the Namal Lake round the year. Due to a drought-like situation in the country, this lake dried up last year, which is the first incident of its kind during the last 100 years, said one of the senior inhabitants of this area.
An engineer told this correspondent that the name of Namal Dam still exists on the list of dams in the world. Namal Lake is an ideal abode for the migratory birds in winter season when thousands of water fowls, including Russian ducks and Siberian cranes, land in the lake water. Due to the apathy of the wildlife department, these guest birds are ruthlessly killed by poachers. To save these birds, the wildlife department must declare this lake a sanctuary.
Namal Valley consists of big villages like Namal, Kalri, Dhurnaka, Dhiba Karsial and Wandhi. It is spread over 650 sq km, according to the revenue department. This is one of the oldest civilizations of the district, having centuries-old vaults on hills and the oldest path used by Mughal convoys known as Luni Road, inviting archaeologists for research. Despite such importance, this area is still neglected on one pretext or the other. There are two well-known shrines of Hafiz Muhammad Azeem alias Hafiz Jee and Peer Khaki Shah which attract thousands of spiritual followers from far and near annually.
The valley has very fertile land, but irrigation by tubewells is very costly, due to 500 to 800 feet depth of underground water, and the cost of electricity is unbearable. Earlier the inhabitants of the area enjoyed flat rate by Wapda, but it has been withdrawn. Now again the people have urged the government to restore the flat rate for this area, which can play a vital role in bringing about a green revolution in this valley.
Together with roads, the inhabitants of the area have demanded provision of educational facilities especially for women who were traditionally discouraged in this area, well-known for forbidding women to cast votes in elections. Now, with the passage of time, people are taking interest in providing education to women. But there are many primary girls schools lying closed, which depicted the true picture of powerful education mafia in this district. Boys and girls middle schools are at Kalri, Dhurnaka, Dhok Ali Khan and Rikhi.
Recently, through the efforts of a serving army officer a girls high school was sanctioned for Dhurnaka. For the purpose, a philanthropist donated 20 kanals of agricultural land and construction work started. There are high schools for boys at Kalrim Dhiba Karsal, Rikhi and Dhok Ali Khan. It is interesting that majority of these schools have vacant posts of teachers and headmasters.
The people of the area made persistent requests to the highups for providing better educational facilities, but all of these seem to have fallen on deaf ears. Nearly seven years ago, a philanthropist of the area donated 40 kanal at Chakda for the construction of a college. The land was transferred in the name of the education department, but nothing has been done due to reasons well known to the department. For providing educational facilities, professional politicians of the area never take interest.
Majority of the basic health units are being run by the paramedical staff and no doctor is available in the dispensaries. It is strange that uptil 1942, a full-time doctor had been working in the dispensary at Dhurnaka. He was renowned for carrying out eye operations in this valley, an old inhabitant told this correspondent. No doubt there are several rural health centres in the valley but all of them are without medicines and doctors, and this needs serious attention of the health department.
Last but not least, Namal Valley being one of the oldest civilizations and also the birth place of many military men needs greater attention of the government to turn it into a tourism heaven and improve the quality of life of its inhabitants.
“MANY years later, that referendum with Islamisation as a ploy was a manifest act of fraud and deceit. General Mujib-ur-Rahman will tell you how distressed he was because I had not gone to cast my vote along with the other personnel of the Ministry, transport provided courtesy Government of Pakistan...The second, that notorious referendum, was worse because it was a deliberate act of fraud and deceit. The stench carries to this day because of the way the question was formulated, after massive advice from legal wizards (one or more) whose excellence was restricted to linguistic sophistry. Had they had half as clean a heart, they would not have led Zia-ul-Haq up the garden path with words that are sweet music to the ears of princes, dictators and democrats alike. But no one can be corrupted unless he is himself vulnerable to corruption and Zia-ul-haq had a high vulnerability quotient. He fell for it, falling in my estimation as a friend deeply distressed... I have seen Mr Sharifuddin Pirzada from a distance only. Right or wrong, I have no desire to get any closer. I am told he was the man who crafted that crafty question for Zia-ul Haq’s notorious referendum. I have no doubt that he is a clever man, on this occasion clever only by half.”
These are excerpts from the book Zia-ul-Haq And I published in 1997 by an intimate friend of the late President. Lt-Col (Retd) Abdul Qayyum, the author of the book, suspected that Sharifuddin Pirzada had a hand in crafting the crafty question asked by Gen Ziaul Haq in his referendum. The same Mr Pirzada is the senior adviser to the present Chief Executive, President Gen Pervez Musharraf, as well. But Mr Pirzada is said to have told his friends that he had nothing to do with the April 30 referendum. In fact some of those who insist that they know the inside story claim that Mr Pirzada had opposed the Musharraf referendum vehemently.
If the late Mr A.K. Brohi was the discoverer of the ‘doctrine of necessity’ for Pakistan and its armed forces, Mr Pirzada is said to be an excellent proponent of this law. And he is also known to have perfected the art of helping military dictators become the people’s choice without their having to go through an election. Gen Zia won a referendum in which the people did not vote and then he got himself appointed the President for five years through a constitutional amendment simply to avoid presenting himself, the COAS, for an election under article 41(3) of the Constitution — an unthinkable idea in the first place (even the Army rules do not permit this); and secondly if he had gone through the process he would have violated the article 63 (1)(d)(e)(k) of the Constitution, according to which a person shall be disqualified from being elected or chosen as, and from being, a member of the Majlis-e-Shoora (Parliament), if he holds an office of profit in the service of Pakistan or other than an office declared by law not to disqualify its holder; or he is in the service of a statutory body or any body which is owned or controlled by the government or in which the government has controlling share or interest, unless a period of two years has elapsed since he ceased to be in such service.
So, without going to the MNAs, MPAs and senators for votes and seemingly without violating article 63 (1)(d)(e)(k) of the Constitution, Gen Ziaul Haq had kept occupied the highest elective office in the country for over three years, thanks largely, it seems, to Sharifuddin Pirzada. And since Mr Pirzada is the main adviser of the present military ruler as well one expects him to lead the present President as well to his ultimate goal without ‘upsetting’ the constitutional apple-cart. The President is already halfway home with the referendum victory in which people as such were kept out. And now the task before Mr Pirzada is simply to ensure that after the Constitution is revived following the October elections the COAS continues to occupy the highest elective office in the country without seeming to be violating article 63 (1)(d)(e)(k).
For a man who has kept a roaring private practice going even when in the service of the public this should pose no problem. All that one has to do is to ensure that the people at large do not detect an element of conflict of interest in the arrangement!!
The following are some more excerpts from Gen Qayyum’s book. These can go without comments:
“Zia-ul-Haq was a welfare-oriented man...He relieved a part of the worries of struggling pensioners by making pensions no longer deductible from the salary of those among them who managed to find some employment after their military service. The housing scheme, entitling officers to a home of their own after retirement, was a boon relieving many of their worries of house- building while in service. However, the anomaly of the caste system continued, something for the Brahmins and something else for the three other categories below. In those three handwritten pages I had given him when he was about to become the COAS I had pleaded for just two categories of official accommodation: two bed-room and three bed-room houses to be allotted according to the size of the family, not rank. He thought I was being professional and the old system continued, from Flagstaff houses all the way through to categories A to E. The spillover in the housing scheme continues: apartments, semi-detached houses, villas and mansions for the Brahmins at the apex. None of us needs anything more than an apartment after retirement, but the changeover is difficult when you get used to a bloated style of life while in service...The mad rush for an increase in the number of square feet in the covered area has become worse with our passion for marble, columns, friezes, chandeliers and what have you. And those hideous boundary walls, of which the mansion on our way to Westridge is but an example.”—Onlooker
I WAS little more than an apprentice at The Pakistan Times, Rattan Chand Road, when I got to know Hamid Sheikh or, to be more precise, he got to know me. He had been the editor of The Civil and Military Gazette for a while before the state of his health obliged him to seek a lighter job and thus it was that he joined The Pakistan Times as a columnist in the late sixties until his death on May 28, 1971. Actually he did two columns for the paper — a radio review and his celebrated ‘Lahore Notebook’.
Hamid Sheikh or HS as I found out early on, was a great teller of tales. A bit on the duskier side, he was a charmer. To be in his company was to be in love with him. I could go on but then I could run out of space. I have decided, therefore, to share with you today a column HS wrote on May 11, 1970. Titled The Fallen Idol, it begins thus:
“The Lahore Centre of Pakistan Council of National Integration has always been an interesting place but perhaps there had never been anything as interesting presented by it as its programme of ‘The Fallen Idol’ arranged by it last week.
“Normally the Lahore Centre of the Pakistan Council of National Integration provides the instruction and entertainment to the people of Lahore with a view to creating ‘Unity through knowledge’ as its motto reads. Language classes, children’s hours, debates, lecturers, evenings with eminent men and all other programmes have very definite and declared aims and they are in consonance with its motto. Once in a while, however, it comes out with something novel, something that people cannot make up their minds about whether to call it a practical joke or something in the nature of ‘kicks’. There are debates about it in the press and often it is agreed that there has been a misunderstanding on the programme either on the part of the Council or the people who were puzzled. The programme put up last week was perhaps one of such cases with the difference that in spite of looking like a practical joke it was not a practical joke but a very serious affair and there are no two opinions about the fact that it was understood by all and sundry.
“The programme, of course, was not labelled by the Council as this report suggests. Its real title was ‘An evening with Master Ejaz.’ No one of the present generation of boys and girls who are in their tens and twenties, had ever heard of this
celebrity: evenings are only held in honour of celebrities, after all. They came to the Centre curious and puzzled by the invitation. Here they saw old men, people over forty and fifty sitting beaming, beaming with nostalgia, perhaps, but beaming all the same, on the other side of the generation gap. The air was full of expectancy.
“The dramatic moment arrived. The celebrity was introduced. Here was a man who ruled the hearts of popular music lovers once upon a time, a man who was considered to be the unrivalled master of crooning in his day and whose songs were on every one’s lips. For decades the gramophone companies rivalled with each other in issuing his latest ditty and his records were sold not by the dozen or score but by the thousand, in the days of that great howling horn above a clock-work turntable on which a thick black little disc turned at a terrific speed and a steel needle scratching it sent thundering screaming noises out of the horn along with its own screechings. But the voice of Master Ejaz was sweet, his song was lovely, his singing immaculate and the eardrums of all listeners were attuned to him. He was the idol of his generation. He was certainly a celebrity. Now he sings no more. The playback singers for the film are now the makers of pop music and Master Ejaz was not one; he was a pop singer in his own right.
“Well, that was a queer situation, to say the least; a forgotten pop singer was a to sing again.
“He did. People listened. They wanted to abandon themselves to the charms of this old master. The old master sang as wonderfully as he did thirty years ago. In fact, his voice sounded much better than it even did when it came out of that howling horn from that thick black disc turning at a terrific speed under that steel needle as if it was meant to burst every eardrum that happened to be within its range.
“People did their best to listen. Soon they were fidgety. They looked at each other. The older people were screwing their eyes for some reason. The younger men and women were flabbergasted. Was this music? The lines had little meaning, the sound had little significance. It was music all right, or was it? Yes, no. Some one laughed at a line which had been constructed only to satisfy formal scanning otherwise it was all wrong, and it was the opening line of a song; had the old generation no sense of poetry?
“Another boy could not contain himself at a musical device which outraged all laws of musical grammar; had the old generation no ear for music?
“And the old generation always sighs. ‘Those were the days?’
“The old master sang on with as much devotion as he could command at his age which was more than he could in his younger days, but his songs, made no sense to any generation.
“Let it be at once understood that the whole thing was not pathetic. Far from it. It was not funny, either. No insult was meant to the old master. It was all not a practical joke. It was indeed one of those queer programmes that the Council puts on once in a while, which gives you a jolt, makes you think. This one did. It gave a jolt to those who sigh, ‘oh, those were the days.’ It gave a jolt to those who think that this generation is not understood: after all, if the pop idol of a generation ago makes no sense today will the pop idols of today make sense to the youngmen and women of the nineties? A fallen idol is worth twice his weight in gold just for bringing home this realisation, even for posing this question. Master Ejaz had done it. And the audience was grateful to him for it.”
Well, I don’t know who this pop singer from yesteryear was. They used to call him Master Ejaz. But the question is: do idols know they have fallen? I know a few who know they were idols of gold in their time before they discovered that like the rest of us, they had feet of clay. With this realisation, they quickly came down from their pedestals, never to aspire for them again. But, alas, there are very few of them. And I love the few fallen idols I have known.
COMPARISONS are admittedly odious. So is establishing similarities or family resemblances facetious. There are moments when one is rendered speechless. The mighty US President, George W. Bush, was at a loss for words during the terrible 90 minutes that saw the Tallest Twins of the world sag and disappear from the New York skyline as if they were only a fond illusion and never really there. Not so tall and invincible after all. These are the thoughts that have taken possession of the hearts and heads of people of Karachi since that shattering early morning blast of May 8.
In real terms as the insurance appraiser would insist, there is no comparison between New York’s September 11, 2001 and Karachi’s May 8, 2002. Indeed, there is no comparison between the two tragedies. None if the measure is only dollars destroyed. The World Trade Center is an empire in its own right. And also the capital seat of what will continue to be arguably the richest empire in the history of mankind, the empire of world capitalism, globalization and what have you.
Would anyone look at Karachi’s tragedy and ordeal from Karachi’s point of view, Karachi’s eyes, Karachi’s mindset and Karachi’s much-bruised heart ? As the heart-winning Francis Williams of a not too distant yesterday used to sing, You are all I have, so in this city most of us think in more or less the same vein about this much mistreated metropolis. May 8 is what we have nearest to New York’s September the 11th, 2001. Has it occurred to any of the wiseacres in Karachi — or in New York — to see or at least perceive some similarity between the anguish of the two? Most probably not. Neither we in Karachi nor they in New York look at obviously similar situations as essentially similar. What divides these superficial attitudes is the error of parallax that makes one city look modest and the other majestic and hence in different classes and castes. Scratch the surface, Karachi’s street blast and New York’s ordeal from the skies are the two faces of conflagration from the same ignition? Behind the two experiences, the motivating urge is born from the same womb. Wait for history to unfold itself. The fingerprints on the WTC debris and on the relics of the blast in Karachi’s Club Road would most likely bear a sibling similarity.
This city is no stranger to calamity or catastrophe. It has had a great deal more of tragedy and trauma that its fair share. It has seen Jinnah die at a crucial moment in its early infancy. Not much later it buried its first prime minister, assassinated in distant Rawalpindi Cantonment. It has watched Governor-General Ghulam Mohammed lose his mind and mess up a great many things that threw the door open to trespass upon its sacrosanct constitutional precincts. Soon two Generals were to ride roughshod over the country and then fall out, one banishing his collaborator. The winner played ducks and drakes with much that mattered in the life of this city. Finally, the General fled Karachi, taking the capital away as booty or prize of war. Take your pick. Later, the same tough returned to celebrate his victory and give this city the nastiest of blue noses to assuage the pangs of his own electoral defeat in this city.
That was not to be last of the accomplishments for Karachi that has to date refused to oblige politicians that descend upon it, wearing crowns. Karachi has endured the like of Jam Sadiq Ali, assisted by the Marwat twins, all of them backed to the hilt by the powers that were then in somnolent Islamabad. In this city we have heard Gen Naseerullah Babar (Benazir’s interior minister) order police to shoot at sight. And they were not slow to obey. In Karachi, we have witnessed the younger brother of a sitting prime minister gunned down outside his home, the same home where the prime minister played her innocent marbles.
In later years, we have had to mourn a dearly held philanthropist, a retired high court judge, a highly regarded business executive, and elder brother of the present minister of the interior. One is beginning to lose count of the medical doctors being targeted, usually in, or close to, their clinics or their residences. Add to this those that have been sprayed with bullets while in prayer in houses of Muslim worship in this Islamic republic.
A city with the tumultuous and tempestuous career like Karachi’s should normally be expected to absorb the worst kinds of shocks and earthquakes, without losing its cool or quiet. But the blast of May 8 morning did shake its crisis-hardened people as they were never shaken before, heart-breaking national tragedies, wars and the shame of the breaking up of the country, notwithstanding. The first shock was a mixture of pain, shame and disbelief. Most people just could not believe their eyes. The horror of the pictures on their television screens left them numb. Could this happen to us? Why should anyone wish to do this to us?
Of course, these are naive questions. Yet no more naive than the questions that powers much stronger and self-conceited are asking without (so far) being able to answer. It has been a time of torment that defies belief as well as words. Now is the time to come to terms with the reality of our situation, however hideous it should be. May 8 cannot be obliterated. It has happened and is now a part of our being. The point is simple, though indeed awesomely challenging: Does May 8 leave us weaker or wiser? Do we fully realize that there is the terrible possibility that last week’s blast is the first but not necessarily the last? That is the question. Let us face it.
THE devastating suicide bombing in the heart of the city last Wednesday, which took the lives of 14 people including 11 French citizens, has shaken Pakistanis to their core. It was certainly not the first incident of terrorism on Pakistani soil but the scale and nature of this attack has driven home to everyone the bitter harvest of the US-led “war on terrorism”. Suddenly, even people in Karachi, far away from the main battlefields of Afghanistan, are acutely aware that they are directly in the firing line.
One journalist, who lives just down the road from where the blast took place and who was among the first people on the scene, reported being jolted awake by the deafening explosion which shook his entire building.
Running out on to his balcony, he saw smoke billowing on the road next to the Sheraton and PC hotels. When two people drenched in blood on a motorcycle, came and collapsed on the road right under his flat, he called his journalist colleagues and ran to the place of the incident.
The scene that he saw was of utter carnage. The smoking, blood-drenched debris of a mangled bus, bodies on the street and trapped inside the bus, the glass windows of both hotels and shops on the ground floor blown out, an eight-feet wide crater on the road and pieces of metal and glass littering the entire road.
He also reported that, as usual, Edhi ambulances were the first aid to get to the scene, and helped ferry the bodies of those killed and wounded to hospitals. But a number of people, including policemen from the nearby station, had also rushed to help in the rescue operations. It was these brave volunteers who pulled the survivors out of the wreckage of the bus. In particular, he also saw one man in a light blue shirt and grey trousers, splattered with blood stains, who was barking orders to the gathering law enforcement personnel, asking for the area to be cleared to make way for the ambulances. This man had already pulled five severely wounded survivors from the bus, probably saving their lives.
The journalist initially thought the Pakistani-origin man was from a civil defence agency. But it soon became clear that he was merely a guest at one of the five-star hotels who had rushed out to help as soon as he heard the blast. When the journalist went up to talk to this man, who gave a graphic description of the carnage he witnessed inside the bus, it also became extremely obvious that the man was completely inebriated. In his traumatized and drunken state, he kept cursing the terrorists as well as the law enforcement personnel for not doing enough to prevent what had happened. “What are they doing to my country!” he kept shouting. Here was an unlikely hero, but a hero nonetheless.
You know your living in Karachi when with the advent of summer your electricity starts going away every day. And it happens often at the worst time possible, usually late evening or at night, when, after returning home from work, you want to sit back, relax and watch some television.
The breakdowns aren’t restricted to any particular area, and the city’s so-called ‘posh’ areas are equally affected. When you call up the KESC people — that is once you manage to get through — they will usually say that either there is a problem in the ‘main line’ (apparently that’s a reference to the grid that supplies power to the whole city) or that some feeders “have tripped”. And if, sitting all exasperated in the warm humid darkness, you ask them why do the feeders seem to trip every day you will probably be told quite rudely that it’s either (a) none of your business or (b) that it’s some technical fault the details of which you probably won’t be able to comprehend.
All this “tripping” happens because people use their airconditions to beat the heat, and the resulting increase in load more than stretches the KESC’s distribution and transmission system. The question then arises is that why cannot the power company have a distribution and transmission system that does not trip during summer.
Surely, the power utility knows that people would want to switch on their airconditioners precisely during this time of the year. Simply saying that the system trips because of this reason isn’t really going to solve the problem, and hardly answers the above question.
For all its frequent breakdowns, the KESC refuses to acknowledge that any loadshedding is going on. However, on the night of May 9, at around 11 pm I called the KESC complaint centre on 5896006 and the person on duty categorically said that the area under question — parts of Defence Phase V and VI — were experiencing loadshedding. “They are in Group III and power should come back by around 11.30,” he said. When I asked him why this loadshedding wasn’t publicized, he said — and perhaps rightly so — that this was the job of the KESC management and all he could really do was tell consumers when they should expect their light to come back.
Like a friend said, Karachi can be quite bearable in the summer, certainly compared to Lahore or even Islamabad — that is, if you manage to survive the incessant power breakdowns.
A colleague from work came the other day and said something quite unusual. She told all of us that we should be careful when we fill petrol in our cars because it’s quite easy for petrol stations to cheat their customers.
Her story was that recently her driver took the family car to a petrol pump. He gave the keys to the tank to an attendant and told him to fill Rs 150 worth of fuel. The attendant, as is the norm these days, told the driver to check the meter. However, a half a minute or so later the attendant came to the driver with the key and said the fuel had been filled and he could leave.
For his part, the driver just happened to glance at the meter before pulling out of the station and saw that the meter read ‘105’ and not ‘150’.
The colleague says that this probably happens more often than we think because in most cases drivers do not really bother to check the reading on the pump’s meter after being told that the fuel has been filled.
A colleague was quite miffed recently about how some people who could never make it to the news pages of a paper manage to appear in supplements. Well, I asked him, what’s wrong with that because you pay for a supplement and that’s how it works everywhere in the world.
However, he said that it was one thing to do that and another to pass of as someone highly qualified when you are not. The colleague claims that this happens quite a bit in the field of education, and it probably would not be difficult to doubt that. After all, education seems to have become quite a business and just like in any business, success comes with good and effective marketing.
Some schools apparently even manage to attach high-sounding adjectives to their names, just to attract parents who would be willing to dish out hefty fees. One case in point, according to the colleague, is that of a Montessori which for some reasons uses the qualifier ‘university’ in its name. And, he says, there are many other such cases. But while all that may be true, this kind of making false claims and misleading advertising has become quite the norm, hasn’t it. It’s not just found in the case of schools passing themselves off to be what they clearly aren’t but applies to basically all kinds of consumer goods and services.
How many of the claims we see on glitzy television adverts are actually true? In fact, if you look at it, even politics and governance are quite affected by this tendency for people to make exaggerated claims.— By Karachian