Faislabad Roits: Energy Crisis Should be Solved Quickly

It was the first day of the year 2009 and the city of Faisalabad, one of the Pakistan’s main industrial center, was on fire. Vehicles were burning, private and public property was being ransacked, a bakery was torched and a leader's house from the governing party was being attacked. The people doing all this were very angry, and they were protesting strongly. They were not angry because their leader was assassinated. Neither they were protesting against a violent terrorist attack in their city. They were angry and protesting because they were one of the major victims of the current energy crisis in Pakistan. These poor laborers will be the first to lose their jobs when energy stricken textile mills in the city will be closed. They were taking all these violent actions because their only source of income is their job in the industrial sector, the sector which is on the brink of collapse because there is not electricity available required to run the factories. I believe the protestors were rightly protesting because the current government has not done anything of major impact to tackle the worst electricity shortage in the history of Pakistan.

It is not only the city of Faisalabad that is affected by this load shedding problem. In fact, almost every region of Pakistan is facing the same problem. Also, the effects are not limited to the industrial sector only. From small business to a common household everybody has been affected badly. And the worst thing is that the government has done nothing but issuing statements.

The current government has said that it has inherited this problem from the previous government which had done nothing in terms of increasing the production capacity of energy. In the summer the Minister of Water and Power Development, Raja Pervez Ashraf vowed numerous times that the electricity crisis would be solved quickly and by the end of the year there will be an improvement in this situation. But I believe nothing of that has happened in terms of improvement. In fact, the situation has aggravated. And now the current government does not have any lame excuse that it inherited this problem from the previous government because the time of eight months is more than enough to show the signs of improvement.

The electricity crisis is affecting the macroeconomy of Pakistan very badly. The government should stop making lame excuses and start working towards the improvement. To solve this an all of the above approach should be used. Government should exploit every means of power generation from coal to hydroelectricity.