KESC needs more will than power

You would be lucky to be a Karachiite and not facing power loadshedding at least thrice a day. And that luck depends on where you live. If you and your neighbours pay the electricity bills on time and don steal the power (or steal less for that matter), the KESC grants you loadshedding free days. Now thats a blessing indeed.
The differentiation between the low-loss and high-loss localities has always guided KESCs strategy for the distribution of its pre-announced power outages. But the latest initiative to reward the good ones has come as a positive surprise for the beneficiaries, which may or may not encourage more responsible behaviour on the part of the customers.
Whether or not the strategy will bear fruit in the long-term is another question but this fails to address the real problem itself i.e. the demand-supply gap.
Exempting one area from load-shedding simply means excessive loadshedding for another area. This will add to the miseries of the good customers in bad neighbourhoods - a perfect example of a rotten apple destroying the whole basket.
Power theft is a ground reality and line losses resulting from theft account for two-thirds of the T&D losses which are as high as 35 percent in Karachi. Loadshedding, in principle, seems a natural consequence of the uncivilised usage of electricity, but it remains heavily imbalanced.
KESC often cites circular debt as one of the major problems in tackling electricity demand of the city and rightly so.
But it is not the general public who are the biggest defaulters of the company; it is the government bodies, both federal and provincial that top the list. To put it in numbers, out of the total outstanding receivables of Rs81.3 billion as of August, nearly Rs50 billion were due on part of the government, according to a KESC document.
Ironically, most of the public sector organizations are exempt from loadshedding in the name of high strategic importance, which essentially leave the general public paying the price both in the form of increased tariffs and long hours of loadshedding. Needless to say, the public sector remains on the bottom of the collection rate list with an abysmally low collection rate of 68 percent.
It should be kept in mind that every 1 percent loss in T&D causes a loss of Rs1-1.5 billion, according to KESCs own report. Add to that the woeful power policy at the federal level and continuing shortage of gas for the power sector, and its no wonder that the power producers now increasingly rely on the alternative furnace oil fuel, which is 2.5 times more expensive.
A significant contributor in higher electricity tariff is the shortage of gas that currently stands at 100 mmcfd for the KESC, alone causing an increase of around Rs2 per unit to the tariff. The non-availability of gas also prevents the company from operating at full capacity, adding to the loadshedding woes.
While the KESC thinks an improved tariff formula is the key to get out of trouble and provide relief to the customers; it is the political will which is the key to success. No matter how the pricing formula works and how public awareness programmers are run - the solution lies in the hands of those who already owe a lot to the countrys power sector i.e. the politicians and their will.