KARACHI: These are dark times indeed. With electricity playing hide and seek almost throughout the night and day, what else does one assume? And while the heat beats down mercilessly adding to the misery, rioters are taking to streets, venting their anger against the KESC every way they can. But though the 12-hour, eight-hour and four-hour power breakdowns persistently make headlines, the new management of the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation continues to keep a smile on its face, mouthing their latest pet rhetoric -– ‘customer comes first,’ ‘we care for our customers,’ – like a wound up toy repeating a tape-recorded message that has been programmed into it.

Sure enough, when the new CEO, Mr Frank Scherschmidt, was brought in by the new owners of KESC – the Al-Jumaih group – the chief executive was personally seen addressing customer complaints regarding bills and other issues. But while Mr Scherschmidt is still working on creating a strong corporate identity, it is becoming gradually clear that that is all he has the power to do. The actual culprits wreaking havoc with Karachi’s power supply are the operational partners of the power company – the Siemens group – which has the two-year contract of running KESC operations and which includes the entire management of its technical setup and operational procedures through which power is supplied to the city.

This anomaly in the KESC management is quite baffling for the average mind. What was the privatization commission thinking when approving the Memorandum of Understanding while acceding to the sale of the KESC by dividing responsibility?

Now the luckless German CEO has been summoned by the standing committee of the National Assembly to answer for KESC’s poor performance. But if Siemens Pakistan is the operational partner, why hasn’t its head been asked to explain the poor performance level as far as the poor distribution of electricity is concerned? And before privatization, why wasn’t its MD, under army management, Brigadier Sadozai ever called to book for the utility’s consistently poor performance which included a 48-hour breakdown?

Brought in especially to revamp the malfunctioning organization when the corporation was bought by the new owners, Mr Frank Scherschmidt has a deadline of two years to turn the organization into a profitable venture. But for now, dealing with the locals, seeped in a culture of inefficiency, employee politics plus consumer relations seems to be taking up most of his energies. How he’ll manage to deliver as per expectations is still unclear as he does not seem to have absolute power over its operations.

And why this irregular managerial structure exists in the new setup of KESC, only the privatization commission is privy to that knowledge. We as consumers have been simply left to face the outcome of the disconnection between the many areas of management in the new consortium of the utility service. So now, when a resident reports of broken wires on the street and the subsequent power failure to the complaint centre (if he/she gets through, that is), the complaint is eventually transmitted to one of the department of the ‘operating’ division of KESC after a number of intermittent stops in between.

And if one is lucky, a repair van is dispatched in a couple of hours to fix the problem and restore electricity supply. The same is the case regarding complaints of tripping feeders, grid station fires and load-shedding schedules, as the operating division manages all these issues.

Shortage of funds is no more an issue as the new management has an estimated budget of $400-800 million earmarked for immediate investment. Besides, it has been learnt that the government had also allocated Rs18 billion for KESC out of which four billion had been injected in the company just before the sell off. So this recent poor performance can only be attributed to inefficiency and a lack of attention given to the decayed infrastructure on the new operators’ part.

The KESC MD has been taking flack for the incompetent behaviour regarding the company’s operations. The Governor Sindh and the Karachi Nazim too have instructed the KESC Chief Executive to assure a smooth supply of power to the city and also to ensure that the shortfall of power generation be rectified. But in reality, the KESC Chief cannot even tender for operating equipment or ask Independent Power Plants to bid without the operating partner’s assent and consultation.

The disconnect between departments is so wide that on the one hand, Federal Minister for Water and Power, Mr Liaquat Jatoi, says that there is more than enough electricity and no loadshedding will take place, and on the other, the KESC spokesperson issues a statement that there is a shortage of power generation which will not be totally bridged until a new power plant is built (which will take two years or more). Also adding that until then, loadshedding will continue.

In the midst of this war of words and blame shifting, the citizens continue to live in darkened days, brought about by inept handling of the utility service by its pre-privatization management, to its sell off and subsequent working outlines defined by the privatization commission.

But yes, accountability is always due to the stakeholders in the organization, where shareholders can play an active part and bring the inefficient culprits to book. So why not each of us citizens become shareholders in the company and ask for accountability when the next annual general body is convened to discuss its profits and losses?

The Governor’s House is a quite five-minute drive from the Corps Headquarters on the Mall Road in Peshawar. Yet, it took Lt-Gen (rtd) Ali Muhammad Jan Orakzai a little more than two years to make it to the picture-perfect British era building to become the 26th Governor of the North-West Frontier Province. No novice to the land of the Pathans, Gen Orakzai is the son of the soil, so to speak.

An Orakzai by tribe, as his name suggests, Ali Jan was the corps commander of Peshawar’s 11th Corps from October 9, 2001, to March 12, 2004, that is, he took the reigns of the army corps just one month after terrorists struck the Twin Towers on 9/11. So it was in those heady days, when the famous phone call from US Secretary of State Colin Powell made Islamabad reverse its policy vis-a-vis Afghanistan and the Taliban and turned Pakistan into an ally in the war against terrorism.

The months leading up to the US invasion of Afghanistan and the collapse of the Taliban regime saw thousands of Pakistan army soldiers moving into what hitherto were considered to be inaccessible and inhospitable tribal regions. Gen Orakzai, being the commander of the operation, oversaw the troop deployment in the rugged mountains straddling the porous Pak-Afghan borders.

It goes to Gen Orakzai’s credit that without firing a single shot, he was able to convince his fellow tribesmen, largely through jirgas, to allow deployment of troops — something to become an anathema for the quick-fix military strategists during days after his retirement. He spoke the language the tribesmen understood, from the high mountains of Terah in the Khyber tribal region down to the rugged and dusty plains of Wana and Miramshah in the restive Waziristan.

At around the same time, Gen Orakzai drew up the much-needed, yet an ambitious development plan for the long-forgotten backwaters of the tribal region that would later trigger a turf-war between the corps headquarters and the Governor’s House that has the constitutional mandate to oversee affairs in Fata.

Unfortunately, the struggle for power and influence in the federally administered tribal areas between an increasingly assertive military and a somewhat beleaguered Governor’s House continues till date and has cost Lt-Gen Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah and Khalil Rehman their jobs. Indeed it is an irony that Gen Orakzai would now find himself in a different role. It was also during the same period that Gen Orakzai, facing mounting pressure from US and allied forces to capture Al Qaeda remnants, continued to deny presence of foreign militants in Waziristan. In fact it was this singular issue that had put him at odds with Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency — the ISI — which persisted with its claims that the restive tribal region had become a sanctuary for foreign militants.

Much water, however, has flowed under the bridge since then. Waziristan is up in flames where militants are in full cry and the government has little or no control.

The seemingly irredeemable situation in Waziristan has cost four political agents, two governors and one corps commander their jobs. Mr Orakzai’s appointment as governor of the NWFP, therefore, appears to be a strategic decision and comes at a critical time, amid mounting criticism and scorn poured on Pakistan not just by the United States and Afghanistan. Now the British also have joined the chorus of “Pakistan not doing enough”. In the words of President Musharraf (address to tribal jirga at Governor’s House, April 26), much of what happens to the hapless country depends on what course the events take in these backyards.

The phase for denial mode is over and Gen Orakzai will have to employ all his experience and tribal background to salvage the situation in Fata and get Pakistan a reprieve. Time is running out. The government can no longer afford to remain complacent or pretend to be doing something or look the other way. Militancy in Waziristan is not just Afghanistan’s problem; it has become a major security problem for Pakistan as well. Attempts to sweep the matter under the carpet will just not work.

He will also have to watch and contain what President Musharraf called “Talibanisation” of three NWFP districts of Tank, Dera Ismail Khan and Bannu. Most important however, and the moral of the story, is that Gen Orakzai needs to learn (from the exit of commander Khalilur Rehman) to find a better equation with the military that calls the shots and is reluctant to concede ground to the Governor’s House, even on what essentially is the latter’s domain.

On the political front, Gen Orakzai’s appointment signals one thing; that by bringing in a military man and that too a native of the tribal region, the federal government want the man in the Governor’s House to concentrate more on Fata. This lends credence to reports that the federal government is comfortable with the MMA.

And if all goes well and according to plan, the federal government would not be too much perturbed if the religious alliance emerges as the single-largest group in the next general elections.