High cost of power

WAPDA and the KESC are once again asking Nepra to permit them to hike their respective tariffs on the ground that their input costs far outstrip their output price requiring massive budgetary support which has been banned under the IMF agreement. The widening gap between their incomes and expenditures has made it extremely difficult to meet their burgeoning payment obligations to their suppliers, especially of furnace oil. On the face of it, the argument for the hike is so convincing that one can hardly disagree with it. The case has most to do with the cost of the fuel, the major input, which keeps rising at short intervals pushing up the bills to be paid by Wapda and the KESC to their fuel suppliers. This perhaps is the reason why the government has decided to put a three-year freeze on the prices of natural gas for the industrial sector. But then the power stations being run on gas are already highly cost-efficient compared to those on imported furnace oil. Since a substantial number of the power stations are on imported furnace oil, they have contributed significantly to making the operations of Wapda and the KESC largely uneconomical.

The frequency with which the two utilities have been asking for permission from Nepra to hike their tariffs has made it look as if without such hikes these two organizations would not be able to continue to remain in operation. On the other hand, any significant increase in the power tariffs would impact adversely on the input costs of manufacturing and services industries rendering their products less competitive in the export markets and out of reach even for large sections of the middle classes in the domestic markets. So, the challenge is not only to keep Wapda and the KESC afloat but also to keep the economy running and in good health. A way out of the predicament has therefore to be found to avoid any major or frequent increases in the cost of power production.

This can be done by bringing down the line losses from the present 40 per cent to about 20-22 per cent which is perhaps the third world average. Next, the government could activate the two-year old proposal of developing all those shallow gas fields which together would produce enough gas to convert at least half the power plants from furnace oil to gas. Thirdly, it could immediately take in hand small and medium-sized hydropower plants which have been gathering dust in the water and power ministry files for a number of years. In fact, when the IPPs were being planned, the idea was actually to fill the immediate gap of about 3000MW that had emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s between production and requirement of power which was affecting the economy very seriously. The long-term power production plans were all based on water and gas. So, let us take them up at the earliest. Meanwhile it is important to convert as many of the power plants as possible to gas. This is the only way to overcome the problems now being faced because of the rising cost of power produced by the IPPs and the need to keep the overall production cost in the country at a level where its manufactures do not become uncompetitive in the international market and they remain within the reach of the common consumers.

Extending Kabul’s writ

IT IS becoming increasingly clear that the greatest challenge facing Afghan leader Hamid Karzai is the ominous security vacuum in the war-ravaged country. While the US is helping raise a professional Afghan army from scratch, the process is likely to take a long time. For the present, Karzai needs to extend the writ of his government beyond the capital. The main obstacle is the presence of powerful warlords who control large parts of the country and rule over them like their personal fiefdoms. Men like Abdur Rashid Dostum in Mazar-i-Sharif and Ismail Khan in Herat, among others, have large militias at their disposal and are hesitant to accept the authority of the central government. More ominously, the defence minister, General Mohammad Faheem, has a large and heavily armed militia of his own which he conspicuously stations close to the capital.

Karzai’s biggest challenge now is to begin the process of disarming the various heavily armed militias scattered across the country. This task will be a daunting one given that he has no significant force at his disposal. The security of Kabul has been entrusted to the UN’s International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF), a Turkish-led multinational force comprising only 5,000 men. It is time to seriously examine proposals being put forward in certain quarters to increase the size of the force and enlarge its sphere of operations. In the past, the US resisted such a proposal preferring the option of keeping a small number of men in Kabul. However, the Afghan government and senior UN officials believe that the force should be expanded to some 18,500 men and sent to at least seven other cities apart from Kabul. The force would serve as a powerful counter to the warlords’ militias and could eventually be deployed to disarm such groups. Difficult though such a course is, Karzai may have to take swift action to improve the law and order situation and bolster his position as head of the interim administration in Kabul.

Students in chains

GONE are the days when madressahs used to be headed by renowned scholars of their times and were considered beacons of knowledge and wisdom in a traditional Muslim society. In recent years, as the madressah culture has proliferated partly because the regular education has gone beyond the reach of the poorer sections of society, the standard of education provided at the madressah is often a big question mark. The children enrolled at these institutions have little to look forward to in terms of job opportunities offering a decent income which they will need to support themselves and their families when they enter life on their own. A typical madressah today is headed by a semi-literate maulvi who, besides teaching children how to read the Holy Quran and pray, also makes them do his personal chores and beats them up mercilessly should they dare disobey him.

This was precisely the case with the two eight-year old boys the Sanghar police picked up after they tried to escape a heartless maulvi who had tied them up in chains. It was the boys’ second attempt at escaping the harsh punishment the maulvi meted out to those guilty of even minor infractions. This is not the first time a madressah teacher has acted cruelly towards young children. Madressahs are notorious for routinely awarding severe corporal punishment to non-complying children. Oddly enough, chains and fetters seem to be the regular instruments of torture used to ‘discipline’ young children, which really constitutes child abuse of sorts in that it may leave deep scars on the young victims’ psyche. That this should be happening in a religious school is a sad commentary on the credentials of the maulvis passing for teachers in many of our madressahs.