| July 4, 2003 | Friday | Jumadi-ul-Awwal 3,1424 |
Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)
Pains of power failure
Reopening of Neelum Valley
DURING his visit to the Pakistan Steel Mills on Wednesday, Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali identified political interference as a major factor in the high level of indebtedness of many public sector entities and in their continuing to be losing concerns. Accordingly, he made a firm commitment to keep these vital public sector organizations free from political interference in the future. Political interference has many faces. A political party in power may decide to oblige its workers with jobs in public sector organizations under its control, in the process creating problems of overstaffing, loss of efficiency and costly sinecurism for these organizations. Or the establishment might decide to oblige some of its serving or retired service men with cushy, highly paid jobs in these organizations carrying lavish perks not available in civil or military services. Such political patronage and feather-bedding become all the more damaging if merit is totally ignored. Efficiency of work and profitability both nosedived as a consequence. At times those in authority have been known to have taken policy decisions which directly affected the very objectives and interests of overstaffed organizations.
In the early years of Pakistan when lack of enough capital and expertise were the two biggest hurdles in the way of private sector investment in vital economic projects having longish gestation periods, the governments of the day established these enterprises with their own resources, managed them for a couple of years and then sold them out to the private sector when they became reasonably profitable. However, the transport and communications sector such as railways, air travel, bus services, telephones etc., as well as utilities such as Wapda, the KESC, and water and sewerage systems remained and still continue to be publicly run and managed because of the essential nature of the services they render.
Then there was a spurt of nationalization in the 1970s which brought under the control of the government even sugar and cement mills as well as banks and insurance companies. This in particular made a massive contribution to the crippling problem of politically motivated overstaffing, sinecurism and lavish perks, turning many profitable firms financially sick or bankrupt. Since the 1980s, there has been a process of denationalization and privatization. This process has inevitably resulted in large-scale retrenchment and downsizing, aggravating the problem of unemployment in the country.
However, the solution does not lie in a hasty process of privatization regardless of other socially and politically vital considerations. While privatization of many enterprises, such as banks, insurance companies, sugar and cement factories, remains the ultimate goal, a great deal of improvement in the operational and financial efficiencies of the public sector enterprises can be achieved by gradually tackling the problem of overstaffing, by stopping political interference in the conduct of their management and employment policies and by actively promoting the concept of professional management. Our multilateral donors may not agree with this approach and may continue to insist on privatization as a cure for many of Pakistan’s chronic economic ills, including large budget deficits. But knowing the serious unemployment problem in the country, we have to resist pressure for a swift process of denationalization and opt for a course of action that is more suited to our socio-political circumstances.
ARE power breakdowns in Karachi ordained to be this bad? The worst affected parts of the city over the past few days have been Lyari and Jamshed Town areas, where power outages have been frequent and long, the last ones lasting two days and 14 hours at a stretch, respectively. This is not to say that other parts of the city remained unaffected. Driven to desperation in the face of scorching heat and the suspension of water supply as a consequence of power outages, hundreds of residents took to the streets on Wednesday. The protesters blocked traffic, burnt tyres and shouted slogans to vent their anger all day. But the KESC only offered the oft-repeated explanation that it was facing “great difficulty maintaining normal power supply because of the breakdown at the SITE-Baldia extra-high tension circuits.” The question is: why did it take the utility as long as two days to fix the breakdown? Or was it that the KESC was only being its true self: inefficient and apathetic towards the plight of the consumers?
There is no doubt that the KESC network has been in a bad state of repair and maintenance mainly as a result of chronic negligence and inefficiency on the part of an inept management which has brought the organization virtually to a point of collapse. There is no dearth of power these days but the KESC cannot maintain an uninterrupted power supply because of its faulty lines and ill-maintained grid stations, which are unable to bear the additional load brought on by the seasonal rise in the demand for power. The story is the same every summer but it has seldom been this bad before. Wednesday virtually saw ‘power riots’ erupting in many parts of the city — a warning signal for the KESC to come out of its apathy and inaction and make the system work better and more dependably — in order to avoid a repetition of Wednesday’s breakdown which might prove more unnerving for itself and other relevant authorities.
THE reopening of a major road in Azad Jammu and Kashmir’s Neelum Valley should be good news for residents of the region, whose movement in and out of the valley had been restricted for years by shelling from across the Line of Control. This strategic road, the only metalled surface linking Muzaffarabad with the long and winding valley in the northeast, had been closed since 1994 because it was in the range of Indian firing. The Neelum river separates the valley from Indian-occupied Kashmir and Indian soldiers positioned on ridges and hilltops across the river used to fire on any traffic on this road. In the past nine years, the road had briefly opened only for two months in 1997. Several thousand people, who live along the valley, will now heave a sigh of relief because they will no longer have to risk their lives or safely to reach their homes as they used to, braving jeep-rides at night, without lights, so as to avoid being detected by Indian troops. Several fatal accidents happened because of this and, over time, many residents left their homes and moved south.
The AJK government has reopened the road after receiving assurances from the Indians that civilians will no longer be targeted. The other positive development is that, as a result of the reopening of this road, the local economy will get a boost, as it will also attract tourists. The Neelum Valley is known for its lush green meadows, snow-clad mountains and pristine landscape. Years of shelling had prevented tourists from coming to this beautiful part of the country and hopefully now that trend will reverse. One would also like to believe that this development is part of a wider initiative on both sides not to target civilians living or travelling on either side of the LoC.