K-ELECTRIC (KE) claims that areas with high electricity theft face up to 10 hours of loadshedding daily. However, the fact is that, in practice, many such areas, including those with paying consumers, experience 14-16 hours of power outages daily. 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 and dishonesty, of KE’s WhatsApp complaint system.

When customers attempt to register a complaint during unscheduled load-shedding hours, the KE system merely responds with an automated message, stating: “K-Electric is aware of the outage and our team is working on it.” This short KE message appears daily during all non-scheduled outages, 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 KE management does not seem to be willing to stop its highhanded tactics. Not only are honest customers deprived of electricity beyond the announced load-shedding schedule, they are also denied their basic right to lodge a formal complaint. Transparent oversight and corrective action are urgently required, but considering the trends in KE, it looks like it is too much to ask or even hope for.

Imran
Karachi

Published in Dawn, March 2nd, 2026