By Staff Reporter
KARACHI: On the mornings of long power-less nights, hot and bothered sleep-deprived employees totter into their offices after burning the country’s history’s most expensive fuel and blackguard their employers in hushed tones for eternally stagnant salaries.
They can easily be mistaken for well-dressed zombies.
Caught between the Scylla of over 12 hours of electricity blackouts and the Charybdis of a Rs210+/litre fuel, they see no point in demanding their offices to allow them to work from home as there’s no way they can afford power generated by petrol-fired portable generators. Nor a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) can help as there’s no power to charge the giant acid-based batteries of these contraptions.
They come out to go to work where they at least can keep their cool in the air-conditioning at the expense of businesses they work for.
These white-collar workers are privileged in the eyes of millions of those, who bide their time living in slummy pigeon-hole lodgings and working every menial job imaginable in inhuman conditions on the streets and everywhere where the sun can generously whip them with its blazing cat-o’-nine-tails before rising on the other side of the world.
The situation is like a ticking time bomb, but nobody knows the time when it is going to blow up. Chaos is winning and if the people come out, anarchy will follow, and this time it won’t be easy to send the victims of the great game back to their wretched lives. No, it’s not going to be a bloody revolution, nor an Arab Spring.
Mercury that seems to be aiming for Mars has catapulted the power demand, while the power managers seem so helpless that they are unable to ensure observance of even planned shedding of the load.
In such an unpredictable situation, people are at the mercy of crippling heat without electricity for hours. It is the worst electricity crisis in a decade.
Everywhere you go in the underprivileged localities you see perspiring poor people raising their fists towards the sky cursing the power utilities.
Incessant power cuts are because the primary energy fuel that accounts for meeting needs of more than three-fourth of electricity generation, have dropped to critical levels due to a variety of reasons, courtesy the worst mismanagement ever.
According to official power shortfall data recorded at 4pm on June 04, 2022, the deficit in electricity demand and supply swelled to a massive 7,235MW on weekends. Out of the total shortfall, power distribution companies are facing 4,650MW supply side constraints while 2,585MW of outages are being carried out in high-loss feeders.
Sources confirmed that with an officially recorded shortfall in excess of 7,200MW, real gap in demand and supply jumped to 8,000MW for the first time as breakdowns and planned suspensions on account of rehabilitation work also reduced over 1,000MW of supply in the national grid.
Peshawar Electric Supply Company (PESCO) is running a deficit of 1,076MW deficit, Multan Electric Power Company (MEPCO) 986MW, Faisalabad Electric Supply Company (FESCO) 960MW, and Lahore Electric Supply Company (LESCO) that is facing 810MW shortfall are on top in terms of worst hit power utilities in the country.
Similar is the case of K-Electric, one of the hardest hit power distribution companies.
A Spokesperson of K-Electric on Saturday broke the news that record high world fuel markets are impacting the power utilities’ ability to purchase and generate affordable power.
“We are engaged with our fuel suppliers & Independent Power Producers (IPPs) for flexible payment timelines in this extraordinary situation,” he said and added, “In these extenuating circumstances, if the fuel supply is curtailed, KE may have to ration power supply”.
He said an updated load management schedule would be posted on the utility’s website and also notified through other means.
Intermittent supply of electricity made lives of people like hell. Aziz Ali, a resident of Abbottabad said in a post on microblogging site Twitter that his city was trending on top because most of the areas here were out of power for more than six hours now.
He insisted that it was not because of some fault but loadshedding.
He lamented it was unjustified to deprive those districts of power where theft rates were the lowest and the recovery highest. Abbottabad falls under the jurisdiction of PESCO.
Najma Minhas, another infuriated consumer, said she did not remember loadshedding being as bad as it currently was -in over 5 years.
“We have used UPS for years as backup power arrangement. This is for the first time when it feels like -we could afford to run a generator,” Najma said.
Saad Rafiq, another poor power consumer, said it was time to hit the streets and shake those, who were sleeping on their jobs in air-conditioned rooms, up against the insane loadshedding. “Getting smooth electricity is one of our most basic rights and there is no way we can take it so lightly,” said Rafiq.
Already tormented by the power-lusting self-serving politicians, who lie to the nation the whole time, the imperious establishment, the sacred cow, always at odds with the former, a bureaucracy corrupt to the core, and their perpetual power struggle, the ‘loadshedding’ seems to have emerged as a new tool to control the people, who just realised what’s going on.
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