July 07, 2007

It was no sooner than 1:30 am in the morning when I was enjoying a sound sleep, something stopped working and I woke up. Well that precious thing was the ceiling fan which didn’t experience any internal fault, but fell an obvious victim to the routine load-shedding that is being carried out these days following no schedule whatsoever. No UPS, no generator and I seemed to have lost my sleep at least till the power got restored.

Turning disastrous in times of this scorching heat, more or less all of our cities experience heavy power shortages on a daily basis for hours. If you are lucky you would go through it during the day time or early hours of night, otherwise you will have to bear the load after midnight. Almost all major cities of Pakistan have been facing power shortage for a long time but unfortunately it has become very much severe this year.

Now I will not be biased here. Let us accept the fact that Pakistan is a developing country and is facing electricity shortage due to immense increase in demand of power supply each passing year, that’s why the electricity supplied to household falls short especially in summer when the use of air-conditioners and fans break all records and load on power stations increases. Since power load cannot be shed from the industries for obvious reasons, it is the domestic consumers who have to bear the burden in the end.

But this power drop out or “load-shedding” to be more specific can be carried out in somewhat a proper way as well. We know that load shedding is carried out during the timings of the most heavy power usage , but still I would say that we, the people, deserve some leniency.

This May-June came up with annual exams as usual and the excessive load shedding in morning hours made it miserable for students to take exams. Areas where schools were situated in large numbers weren’t even spared, let others alone. Board exams, school exams, Cambridge papers all held this year in summer time as per schedule and even the schools/colleges that served as examination centres succumbed to load-shedding during the 9-12 paper hours. Also, another major problem that we face is the one I highlighted in the beginning, load-shedding after midnight. It is needless to mention the evident fact that the majority of our working population needs a sound sleep at night after a tiring day. This also includes patients, students and poor people who don’t have many facilities to entertain them in the event of power drop out, sometimes not even a proper window to provide access to the nature’s fan, “fresh air”. For all these people, an electricity shortage when they are asleep is no more than a nightmare

Therefore my request to the concerned authorities would be to kindly consider the timings of load-shedding. If this load-shedding has to be carried out for the important reason of maintaining power supply balance, the timings can be limited to between 12 noon and midnight, not before or after that.

Now coming back to the original issue, why do we have to face such an enormous amount of load-shedding every year in summers? Well, part of the problem is due to the fact that concerned organisations failed to plan and carry out proper expansion to increase supply. But we will have to accept that we ourselves are also to be blamed for over use of electricity. On micro level, I agree, one household making 500 units a month won’t make any difference, but if you look at the macro level, you’ll see that these 500 units will sum up to make a huge amount of power used only in domestic households. If some responsibility has to be taken by someone, this “someone” should be us as well. I agree to the fact that optimum electricity need is our due right which should be provided to us and load shedding should be no tool to provide any alternative to this right. But on our side of the court, we too have some responsibilities on us not-so-responsible-shoulders, partly due to the fact that we have to face these issues as citizens of a developing country.

Well, if we just look at the daily routine, the way we use electricity is more of wastage than usage. Just like you keep the tap open while brushing teeth, you keep the tube light or energy saver whatever in your room turned on when you are not in the room, even when you are out for dinner for half an hour. Check out your kitchen light as well, it might stay on for almost all night before your mom goes to sleep even if nobody is there. The other thing that is of foremost importance is the massive use of air-conditioners. No doubt, in summer, air-conditioners are needed, but this doesn’t mean that you keep using the utility for hours even if your dad can pay the bill no matter how huge.

Think of the other side as well as this load is borne by the city at large. Set it to optimum usage as per the weight of the A/C and size of your room. Set timers; don’t let it on for the whole night or noon. Same goes for other electrical devices as well such as iron which people forget to turn off many times. Also such small mistakes can count to disasters both in home and in bills. These are small things which turn large when you observe them from a nation wide perspective.

So as we move forward towards the end of this article, let us do our part and ask the concerned authorities to do their part. It’s only when everybody in our society knows his or her responsibilities and carries them out duly, that we can shape a brighter future for our nation.