KARACHI: Usually when there is a protest or sit-in due to K-Electric it is because of prolonged outages during summer when the people just can’t take the heat any more and come out of their homes, but the sit-in by the public at Korangi Crossing on Monday was not due to prolonged outages. It was agianst overbilling.

The consumers at the sit-in were mostly residents of Altaf Town. All were waving their electricity bills some of which were for Rs15,000, some Rs40,000 and some even Rs600,000.

Aliya Khan, one resident who received a bill for Rs600,000 this month, said she lived in a one-room flat with one ceiling fan, two light bulbs and one washing machine. “I can’t even afford a fridge. Please explain to me how my bill added up to this much when I don’t even have that many electrical appliances,” she pleaded.

Nabila Bibi, present there, also had a Rs600,000 bill. She cried: “I’m a housewife and my husband is a poor labourer who makes bricks all day long. What can I do? It would have been better that KE sent a bottle of poison, too, with this bill. My husband makes Rs500 a day. We can’t even afford to buy poison.”

“What is KE punishing me for? I work as a security guard. I earn only Rs9,000 and I am slapped with a Rs42,000 bill!” remarked Sajid Hassan, while blocking traffic on the road.

Holding their bills of Rs10,000 and Rs14,000, Majidan Bibi and her husband, Shaukat, asked what had been going on for the past two months that this happened. “We used to get bills worth Rs500 or Rs600. And now suddenly it’s this,” they screamed in disgust while displaying the bills. “And if we go to the KE office they insult us and tell us to first pay the bill and then they’ll look into the matter,” the wife added.

The sit-in started at around 2pm with some residents forming a human chain and others sitting behind them on the road to block traffic for hours and prevent many people from passing through. Due to this, some vehicles had to be diverted towards Bhitai Colony while teachers and all others who worked there had no option but to wait.

The protesters didn’t vacate the road until an armed robber approached them and collected their belongings at gunpoint. They were on their toes when the Rangers arrived.

A few Rangers personnel soon approached the protesters with an offer to help them but the protesters demanded that they see KE’s managing director. “Please clear the road. We’ll escort some of your elders to the KE office ourselves but only if you clear the road. It is of no use to inconvenience the general public,” said an officer of the paramilitary force while attempting to negotiate with them. When approached on the issue, a KE spokesman told Dawn that they had invited a representative from the protesters to sit with them and sort out the issues on merit amicably.

In Altaf Town, he said, they had recently laid aerial bundle cable (ABC) while giving new connections to the residents who didn’t even have connections earlier and were stealing power through the kunda system. “The ABC work was completed in September, with the residents getting the bills which have been issued to them as per their consumption just recently. But not being used to receiving bills they are not happy about the whole situation and therefore came out to block Korangi Crossing. And all this after teams from KE’s Integrated Business Centre went from door to door in their neighborhood to address their grievances,” the spokesman claimed.

Published in Dawn, November 10th, 2015