TEMPERATURES are rising as summer approaches. So is the frequency and duration of power blackouts. A report in this newspaper stated over the weekend that power distribution companies have already begun resorting to 10 to 12 hours of supply cuts to manage the spike in daily demand as generation lags far behind. It quoted a Pepco official warning the people to brace themselves for a far worse summer this year. To most consumers, domestic and industrial, it makes little sense to live 12 hours each day of summer without power when they are buying the most expensive electricity in the region. At the same time, the government's decision to suspend gas supplies to some power producers, and the shortage of oil faced by others has added to general power woes. Chances are that tempers will also rise in tandem with the mercury and power cuts as people feel the heat caused by electricity shortages.

When Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government won the elections last May on the promise of resolving the growing energy shortages, a large majority quietly accepted its decision to raise electricity prices. They did so in the hope of an early improvement in the situation. Later, police came down heavily on a protest against the power cuts in Faisalabad. No one came out on the streets after that incident. Will people continue to suffer silently? It is unlikely. The honeymoon period is over. And, regrettably, the government has done little to make use of the opportunity to reform the energy sector — let alone add to the existing generation capacity — which could have helped significantly improve power supplies for homes, markets and factories.

Unpaid bills of power companies and their fuel suppliers have again shot to over Rs200bn in less than nine months of the liquidation of their previous arrears of Rs480bn. The reasons are obvious. The authorities have implemented only the part related to the increase in price of the energy sector reforms spelt out in its energy policy. Nothing has so far been done to control electricity theft, reduce transmission and distribution losses and recover unpaid bills from public and private consumers owing to lack of political will, the huge public mandate of the government notwithstanding. The issues of poor governance, organisational weaknesses, inefficiencies, corruption and lack of competitiveness facing public-sector power companies are yet to be addressed. Indeed, the problems faced by the energy sector are ‘extensive and deep-rooted’ and it will be unfair not to give the government credit for efforts to woo investment in new generation. But it is also a reality that it has done far less than what was expected of it and what it had claimed to achieve before and immediately after the polls.