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Too little, too late?
EXACTLY six months after it made a similar attempt, the government is back to checking off a familiar list of ‘austerity measures’ that it thinks will save the country countless billions every year.
The measures include shutting down markets and restaurants by 8pm, instituting a work-from-home policy for a fifth of the government workforce, introducing electric motorbikes and more energy-efficient lightbulbs and fans, moving government buildings to solar energy, conserving water and harvesting rain, and other measures to reduce energy wastage.
The similarity of this list to another list of measures announced in June — at that time, to conserve electricity during a deepening energy shortfall — is impossible to miss.
One wonders if the same files were dusted off and handed over to the honourable ministers of our government to present once again to the public, as they are certainly not the novel solutions to the crises we face as they have been made out to be.
To be clear, there is nothing wrong with the different measures themselves. The problem lies in implementing them, which the government seemed absolutely helpless in ensuring the last time around, and more than likely will this time, too, especially once the traders’ unions, market associations, and lobbyists start kicking up a fuss.
There is also the fact that most of these steps aren’t even drastic, and some won’t start bearing fruit until many months later. Consider, for example, the proposal for market closure by 8pm. While it may indeed save a few hours’ worth of electricity consumption, 8pm is still quite late considering that the sun sets hours earlier in the winter.
Likewise, phasing in electric bikes and more efficient lightbulbs or moving all government buildings to solar energy is not something that can be done overnight. Water conservation and rain harvesting again require extensive infrastructure investments that we may not even have the resources for at the moment.
One would almost feel sorry for the government representatives made to announce these measures had the stakes not been so high and Islamabad’s inaction over the past six months not so exasperating.
Circling back to the same policy measures six months after they were abandoned just shows that the government is all out of ideas and should never have strayed from the course it was set on.
If that isn’t enough of a damning indictment of its failure to prudently manage the economy, what is? Finance Minister Ishaq Dar also needs to find the courage to face the nation and make these announcements himself in the future.
His return to the country, endorsed and pushed by Nawaz Sharif and his daughter, has failed to yield any big change in economic conditions. Instead, with the government now reverting to the policies of his predecessor, his policies only seem discredited beyond repair.
Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2022
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