THE person who came up with the sugg-estion to conduct forced electricity loadshedding in areas with high electricity theft was either incompetent or an enemy of the nation and the people of Pakistan. The strategy does not make any economic sense, and it only punishes the paying consumers rather than ending the problem of electricity theft, which happens only with the help of the staff of distribution companies (Discos).

Let us suppose an area is supplied with 100 units of electricity costing Rs5 per unit, and there is a loss/theft of 10 units. The relevant Disco recovers Rs450. But the Disco, under the current strategy, decides to impose forced electricity loadshedding for, say, 30 per cent of the time, or seven hours per day. Now, the Disco supplies 70 units of power and there is still a loss of seven units because the actual problem has not been fixed. The Disco is now able to recover only Rs315.

Since the government has to still pay for 500 units of electricity due to the nature of existing contracts with the suppliers, the Disco, by recovering Rs315 instead of Rs450, has increased the shortfall in income from 10pc to 37pc.

This is simple mathematics, not rocket science. The forced electricity loadshe-dding is reducing the income of Discos, and helping increase the national circular debt. Besides, it is creating hundreds of problems for the people and businesses. The simple solution is to hold the staff responsible for the losses, and get them to identify electricity thieves.

One can only hope that the government will stop this ridiculous action of condu-cting forced loadshedding as it is slowly destroying the national economy. Even Pakistan’s enemies would have struggled to cause this much harm to the country.

Shahryar Khan Baseer
Islamabad

Published in Dawn, October 27th, 2024