KESC: low service, high bills

SO, what is the difference between electricity and lightning? You don’t have to pay for the latter!

Many consumers of the Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation wish that the power utility is struck by lightning so they no longer have to pay the increasingly excessive bills. Such people include Ishtiaq Hussain from Korangi, who says his monthly electricity bill has leapt from less than a thousand rupees to over Rs2,500, and Mujeebur Rehman from Gulshan-i-Iqbal, who says his monthly bill was about Rs4,000 till a couple of months ago, but has jumped to more than Rs8,000. “The last bill was Rs8,600. This month it is Rs8,250, a little less,” says Mr Rehman, who owns an air-conditioning unit but insists he does not use it. “The whole salary goes into paying utility bills and it has upset the household budget and my wife. I don’t know what to do?”

Thousands people do not know what to do about this phenomenon that is adversely affecting family lives. An obvious choice is to steal electricity and abuse it. This is what KESC officials are driving honest, or cowardly, people into doing.

The Wapda chairman gives the jitters to the consumers as he claims that there has been no increase in the power tariff for the last three years. That’s true. There has been no declared raise. All they have done was done clandestinely. Just ask an honest consumer how much he used to pay three years ago as electricity bill and what he is paying now. Many people would present a documentary proof, the monthly bill, to show that there has been an over 100 per cent increase within this year.

What the KESC people have done to cover up this undeclared raise is they have installed 'new’ meters. When these meters were put into action, there were cries of foul play all around. Somehow, people have accepted it as their fate and have gone silent. This is how the common people can afford to react, but where are the so-called champions of consumers’ rights? Why don’t they challenge the utility in a court of law?

Recently a group of seminarists impressed upon the government to rollback the KESC privatisation. They argued that the privatised KESC was worse than the public sector KESC. There has been no improvement in its service. It has focused all its energies on increasing its revenue. The commitments its buyers had made to the government and the public have been brushed under the carpet.

No weather boosts its efficiency. When it is summer, the KESC says the problem is because of the additional demand for electricity supply. When it is winter, it says the flow in the rivers has shrunk and hit the hydel power generation. In between the two extreme seasons, too, it has numerous excuses to shield itself. Its grid stations break down, its high-tension wires snap, it receives short supply from Wapda, and when there is none of these excuses to stand upon it blames the power breakdown in a particular area on 'localised’ faults. Whose faults? When consumers try to make complaints about breakdowns, there is hardly anyone to register them.

Ironically, the month the consumers suffer worse outages, they have to pay higher bills.

For its revenue, too, the KESC may lament that it is paying more to Wapda than its other bulk consumers, there are line losses, people are stealing power through illegal connections and meter-rigging, and so on. But the scapegoats are the people with limited incomes. KESC officials have several times admitted that they are charging extra to make up for their losses.

The success of the second Karachi International Book Fair, the largest book fair to be held in the country, has been heart-warming in more ways than one. The number of participants increased phenomenally. Last year there were 120 stalls in one hall of the Expo Centre, but this year the number exceeded the 200-mark and the organisers booked two halls in place of one.

One would have expected the government to have given some concession to the organisers. This would have been in line with their policy to spread education and popularise book culture - at least, that is what is claimed by the men and women in power. Some of the Indian publishers who had set up their stalls were more than happy with the sales of their books, which are infinitely cheaper than the ones that are imported from the US and the UK. Those local booksellers who had stocked their stalls with books published a few years ago, or worse, put up their dead stock on display at normal prices could not recover their costs, but all those who offered good bargains such as Ferozsons from Lahore and Paramount and Liberty from Karachi found their sales up by 15 to 25 per cent over last year.

It was also heartening to see people, belonging to the middle class, coming in large numbers with their families and going back loaded with books. The Defence-Clifton crowd was by and large conspicuous by its absence. So were the people who claim that books are expensive and don’t mind going to swanky restaurants and pay through their nose.

A colleague who spent a lot of time in the five-day international book fair was moved by the sight of a daily wage earner, coming out of the fair with two small girls, presumably his daughters, who were holding pictorial Urdu books in tight grip. Normally, people from that economic class are reluctant to spend on the education of their daughters but are relatively generous with their sons.

Two of the organisers told Karachian that they were quite astonished to hear the wailing siren of an ambulance. They feared that there was a mishap at the Expo Centre but much to their surprise the ambulance brought a booklover on a stretcher. He was accompanied by his wife. He was taken to different stalls from where he bought quite a few books. The man has been bedridden for more than a decade, but his passion for books has remained unabated.

— Karachian

Email: naseer.awan@dawn.com

Manchhar lake: a disaster in the making?

KARACHI: The water level in the Manchhar Lake, Dadu district, has reached a dangerous high and although a round-the-clock vigil is on, a disaster cannot be ruled out.

The water level has already touched a mark of 113.9 RL, causing seepage at four points. A number of villages lying near the embankment stand waterlogged. And if the embankment gives in to the torrent, it will not only devastate large areas in Bubak, Sehwan and Bhan Syedabad, but also the highly toxic water will advance up to Hyderabad and down to the delta. This is likely to leave a trail of devastation -- both in terms of human life and damage to cattle and crops.

The discharge of lake water began on Dec 10 and at present 390 cusec is being released thrown into the Indus in order to lower the lake level. Before the water discharge began, a meeting of experts decided on Dec 7 to release water at a ratio of 1:50 as the lead content stands at 5,000mgs instead of 500mgs while the magnesium content is 700mg instead of the normal 30mgs.

In 2004, when toxic water of the lake was discharged into the Indus, it brought death to 42 people in Hyderabad, sent hundreds to hospitals and caused a substantial damage to vegetation in lower Sindh. The situation may deteriorate after Dec 25 -- when the canals of the barrages would resort to rotation, stopping the discharge from the two barrages for general consumption.

The issue of throwing toxic water into the Indus goes back to the construction of the Right Bank Outfall Drain (RBOD), which brings saline water from upper parts of the country. The Manchhar lake system is based on a natural fill-and-discharge. The system works in a manner that during the flood season the Indus water fills the lake through Aral canal. And during

the off season -- when Indus gets lesser water from Sukkur Barrage -- Aral releases the lake water back into the Indus to meet the shortage downstream Kotri.

Since the commissioning of a part of the RBOD in 1982, the Manchhar has been taking a much longer time to fill. But in recent years when the lake failed to get the required fresh quantity of water, the ratio of toxic water increased. And when this toxic water was released in 2004, it wreaked havoc in Hyderabad and other towns that get drinking water from the Kotri Barrage and Kotri waterworks.

Many people died and cattle and agriculture below Kotri Barrage suffered. After an intensive study, it was decided that the quantity of Manchhar lake water to be released in Sindh would be determined under the following criteria:

a) the water does not contain more toxics than normally usable, and

b) the proportion of water in Indus and water to be released from the lake be maintained at a ratio of 1:50.

At the Dec 7 meeting of experts, it was said that if the pressure on Manchhar is to be reduced in 15 days, the water intake in Indus from Sukkur Barrage should not exceed 200,000 cusecs – an improbability during the current season.

However, the option of releasing 1,000 cusecs was also discussed but then it needed a discharge from Sukkur Barrage to at least 50,000 cusecs – again a difficult proposition. It was only after experts’ visit to the site and water availability in the Indus that 390 cusecs was released.

At present 15,000 cusecs have been released from the Sukkur Barrage. This includes 30 per cent losses during the 15-day flow to Kotri Barrage.

This year, rains in the Kachho areas have raised the level of lake water. This threatens to inundate adjoining towns and farmlands.

An immediate solution to the exigency is nowhere in sight. In the first instance, the volume of lake effluents released into the Indus cannot exceed the standards recommended by experts. If the lake is allowed to stand the increased pressure, a constant fear of breaches remains. The fate of thousands living in the vicinity is unimaginable.

The only plausible solution is to immediately release 50,000 cusecs of Indus water from the Sukkur Barrage for at least a week and to increase the offtake from Manchhar to 600 cusecs to pre-empt any danger to its banks. In the meantime, the quantum of water to be released from Tarbela for the Indus could be increased to replenish the losses for the current crops.

It is for experts and leaders to fill the shortage caused by the release of water from Tarbela. But to leave things unattended will only invite unforeseen catastrophe.