THIS refers to electricity theft in Karachi. The electricity situation in Karachi has been alarming for the last several years. The shortfall in electricity has not only impacted business activities but also the domestic lives of the people. Students and patients are worst affected.

Usually, power suspension is blamed on power suppliers, but consumers are equally to blame. Those who do not pay their bills on time and resort to stealing power are also responsible for the many hours of outages.

Electrical equipment used in houses, including heaters, geysers, iron presses and water motors, further increase power consumption leading to wastage and an increase in power bills.

In order to avoid high electricity bills, consumers resort to hooking up to illegal connections. With the illegal use of electricity, the power utility authorities fail to plan accordingly and hence the incidents of snapped electrical wires or PMT fault increase owing to overload. This troubles the public in the form of prolonged power suspension in a particular area. It is clear that staff of power utility services cannot reach soon to rectify such faults and because of this delay the outage duration gets prolonged.

Power theft is a crime and those who use electricity illegally should be severely punished. The so-called kunda connections might be beneficial for those who benefits from these kundas but we the honest consumers have to bear the brunt of high tariff and inadequate supply of electricity.

The launch of Operation Burq by K-Electric has given hope to the people of Karachi, especially bill-paying consumers who have suffered a lot at the hands of the power thieves. I am optimistic that through this initiative we will finally have respite from power cuts.

A citizen

Karachi

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2020