IT has been a number of years now that K-Electric has been following the practice of enhanced load-shedding in ‘high-loss’ areas, but so far, very few voices had been raised against the injustice of this policy. Now a small group of civil society activists have had the conscience to speak up against this patently unfair policy. The latter is the toast of the city’s elites because it means superior service and uninterrupted supply to well-to-do neighbourhoods and industrial areas. But for the majority of the city’s residents it spells misery. K-Electric has managed to turn its finances around in large measure due to this policy, but the net result has been the diversion of a considerable proportion of the city’s power supply to elite consumption, leaving the poor behind. The policy makes very good commercial sense, but in moral terms it promotes the inequitable allocation of a vital resource — electricity — that can be considered a public good.

Karachi needs more voices like those of the activists who recently held a news conference against the policy of recovery-based load-shedding. The poor are almost always left out of the conversation when looking at how the city’s resources are allocated — whether the issue is water, land, transport, or, as in this case electricity. K-Electric enjoys monopoly status as the only provider of power to this city of 20 million, and its workings cannot be left solely to market forces to determine. There are, indeed, serious problems in high-loss areas with recovery teams being attacked, but solutions also exist, particularly with the enhanced use of Aerial Bundle Cables, to reduce theft. Awareness campaigns against the old system of kunda connections have also worked well in some cases. Clearly, a high road exists to rectify the problem in high-loss neighbourhoods, but the current incentive structure under which the utility works provides no encouragement to actually take that route. The policy is a highly unfair one and should be dispensed with as soon as possible.

Published in Dawn, May 24th, 2016