THE official stance of K-Electric (KE) claims that areas with high electricity theft face up to 10 hours of loadshedding daily. However, in practice, many such areas, including those with paying con-sumers, experience 14 to 16 hours of power outages. This is both excessive and unjust. Honest, bill-paying citizens are being punished for the wrongdoings of others in their locality.

Adding to the concern is the inefficiency, perhaps even intentional design, of KE’s WhatsApp complaint system. When customers attempt to register a complaint during unscheduled loadshedding hours, the system merely responds with an automated message, stating: “K-Electric is aware of the outage and our team is working on it.” This message appears daily during non-scheduled outages, effectively blocking users from registering any formal complaint.

Such tactics raise a troubling suspicion: by redirecting and filtering complaints through pre-set messages, the company appears to be minimising complaint records, possibly to present misleading statistics to regulatory authorities, and avoid accountability for compensation or regulatory scrutiny. The regulator must take serious note of the issue. Not only are customers deprived of electricity beyond the announced schedule, they are also denied their right to lodge formal complaints. Transparent oversight and corrective actions are urgently required.

Imran
Karachi

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2025