KARACHI: With loadshedding becoming unbearable for Karachiites amid a federal government proposal to slash power supply of the metropolis and divert it to other parts of the country, parties having political stakes in the city came up with a strong reaction against the K-Electric on Tuesday terming it “East India Company” that couldn’t be questioned even by the regulator.

The reactions from the parties suggest growing pressure on political organisations amid a prolonged power crisis and protest in different parts of the city, which pushed many of them to stand by the people of Karachi unlike the past trend.

In separate statements and press conferences, the parties unanimously asked for the performance audit of the KE and demanded a “penalty” for its “failure” to maintain its generation, transmission and distribution system that also caused power outages in the name of “technical faults”.

They also questioned the role of federal government and the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) for their “silence” when it came to check the performance of the KE.

Federal govt’s proposal to reduce Karachi’s power supply slammed

“KE has broken past records of its incompetence and failures,” said a statement from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P).

“The people of Karachi have become fed up with the performance of the power utility. The experiment of its privatisation has failed miserably. We demand that the federal government think over options to revive the performance of the company. Many areas are suffering 12 to 16 hours of loadshedding. This is inhuman and the credit of this mess goes to KE,” it said.

The city chief of the Jamaat-i-Islami, Hafiz Naeemur Rehman also called for performance audit of the power utility and said that a “criminal silence” of the government and political forces had exposed the nexus behind the “fake crisis” and “overbilling” by KE.

“We believe it’s not a political issue,” he said: “It’s a very common and human issue of every Karachiite. The KE has become a monster. Today’s fact is this monster is not even in the control of the government.”

The city president of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), Bilal Ghaffar, called it “brutal” and “cruel” to leave people of the city without power by the KE.

“The arrogance of KE authorities suggests that the company is not even answerable to our imported prime minister,” he said. “We demand that the Supreme Court take notice of power crisis in Karachi.”

Criticising KE for its poor performance, Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) chairman Mustafa Kamal also questioned the proposal of the federal minister who hinted at slashing the power supply of the Karachi to enhance it in other parts of the country.

“Instead of considering ideas to enhance production, the federal government is thinking over cutting supply to Karachi. This shows incompetence and their connivance with the KE. The parties in the power unfortunately never take problems of Karachi seriously,” he said.

Shahi Syed, the Sindh president of the Awami National Party (ANP), termed the KE “East India Company”.

“How ridiculous it is that people are asked to pay more for less supply. The state-owned KESC was privatised to end loadshedding, but in all these long years, the KE failed to increase its generation leading to more outages and loadshedding compared to past,” he added.

The chairman of the Mohajir Qaumi Movement, better known as MQM-Haqiqi, Afaq Ahmed, referred to the densely populated areas like Landhi, Korangi, Malir and Lines Area where the people were forced to live without power for up to 16 hour a day with exorbitant electricity prices.

He asked Karachiites to boycott KE and explore different options to get power supply, including solar energy.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2022