| 11 April 2004 | Sunday | 20 Safar 1425 |
Unsettling talk
Power troubles
It is always good to hear that the nation's per capita income is moving upward. But the news that it is going to rise from the present $492 to $600 within the next few months sounds a bit too good to be true. However, since the forecast has been made by the country's finance minister himself, one cannot but believe it. More so because, since he assumed the stewardship of our economy in 1999, Mr Shaukat Aziz has been making all the right calls. He has successfully worked with the IMF's trickle down prescription.
The tight leash he kept on public sector expenditure during the last four years has started yielding the desired results. For the first time in many years Pakistan has been able to attain a modicum of macroeconomic stability. Production, exports, revenue income, investment and foreign exchange reserves have all shown a record growth.
The burden of debt has been brought down significantly. As a result the overall GDP growth rate is expected to go up to nearly six per cent during the current year. Therefore, there is no reason not to believe Mr Aziz when he says that the country's per capita income during the current year will reach $600.
What, however, one needs to keep in mind while welcoming the happy tidings is that the situation on the poverty front has been deteriorating in the meantime. In the last four years, poverty in Pakistan has risen from 28 per cent to 33 per cent. The unemployment rate has gone up from 7.8 per cent to 8.5 per cent. This means that the increase in per capita income actually mirrors the fact that the rich are becoming richer and the poor poorer.
If per capita income is rising at such a high rate when poverty is increasing at an equally dramatic rate then the only conclusion that could be drawn from it is that the privileged few are making hay while the sun is beating down very harshly on the underprivileged. This is a disturbing trend. It has to be stopped quickly, or else the expanding sea of poverty will drown out the small islands of prosperity in no time, nullifying all the gains so far made by the economic managers of the country.
Jobs should be created on a large scale, not by opening up the doors of loss-making public sector enterprises, but by increasing the public sector development budget and taking up labour intensive infrastructural projects - both in the social and economic sectors.
We should also be exploring some innovative ideas to reduce poverty as quickly as possible. In this connection, we could look rather more closely at the ideas of the Peruvian economist, Hernando De Soto, who was here at the invitation of President Musharraf a couple of months ago and who had given a comprehensive lecture on how to convert what he called the dead capital in developing countries into tangible, bankable assets for the poor.
He was perhaps talking about giving property rights to the dwellers of kutchi abadis and "encroachers" on government land, both in the urban and rural areas, and making these rights bankable. The idea is innovative. Let us find out if it is workable as well.
Unsettling talk
The so-called People's Party Parliamentarians - rebels from the PPP - seem extraordinarily concerned about President Pervez Musharraf's undertaking to lay down his uniform in December. This undertaking forms part of the government-MMA agreement on the LFO that has permitted a rudimentary parliamentary system to function in the country. Now, first it was Defence Minister Rao Sikander Iqbal who said that the president should retain his uniform to ensure stability.
Then, on Friday, Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat made the same suggestion. The latter's statement was given prominence on state-owned television, and this makes the antennae buzz. Has a move begun to prepare the ground for the president to retain his general's office after the December deadline? Have the former PPP men now in government been chosen to put out the necessary feelers? Or are they doing this out of the instinct of sheer self-preservation, fearing for their own political future if, as civilian president, Gen Musharraf feels it is necessary for him to open lines of communication with the PPP and the PML-N?
This is all in the realm of speculation, but the political sands are showing some interesting signs of shifting, not least with the prospect of Mian Shahbaz Sharif making a bid to return to Pakistan. There have been proposals before - from the Pagara camp? - that Gen Musharraf should be offered the presidentship of a combined Muslim League. If there are politicians willing to make suggestions like this, should the military be blamed for holding all politicians in contempt? Both Rao Sikandar Iqbal and Makhdoom Saleh Hayat are also supporters of the National Security Council.
Isn't that supposed to provide stability to the system? So why also the uniform? The president has repeatedly said he wants to remain at the helm for five years to ensure continuity of policy. We now have statements indicating that this also needs him to continue as head of the army. Such talk can only lead to greater instability, uncertainty and confusion and ensure that we remain trapped in our state of infantile political development. The general must immediately put a stop to all such statements that seek to revive a settled issue, and make it clear that he stands by his constitutional agreement.
Power troubles
The increase in the frequency of power failures seen in different parts of Karachi as temperatures start to climb is not a good indicator of what lies in store for power consumers in the summer months. At fault is an outdated and inefficient power transmission and distribution system on which very little work seems to have been done in the past few years.
Despite tall claims by the army-led management of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation of revamping the system and bringing down line losses, the ground reality seems to belie this claim. Line losses stand at 40 per cent, when the internationally accepted level is under 10 per cent. The wastage of so much electricity is a national loss that needs to be checked. Part of the problem is an increase in power theft, especially through the kunda system.
The ultimate sufferers of this practice are the hapless power consumers, who endure frequent power cuts, fluctuations and low voltage as power thieves remain free to draw upon the available supply for domestic, commercial and industrial use.
Considering the fact that there is no shortage of generation capacity for power and the demand for power is on the rise with the increase in population and the expansion of the economy, more needs to be done to ensure uninterrupted supply. Irate power consumers also complain about the apathy and indifference of the KESC staff to their complaints.
The phone numbers that are given out by the utility to register power failures and other complaints are usually busy or out of order. All these problems need to be addressed by the KESC management at the earliest, otherwise power consumers will suffer needlessly in the coming months for no fault of theirs.