KARACHI: Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Karachi staged a protest outside K-Electric’s head office in Gizri on Wednesday against prolonged loadshedding and inflated electricity bills, accusing the power utility, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) and the government of making life miserable for Karachiites.
Addressing a press conference at the protest, JI Karachi chief Monem Zafar criticised Nepra for failing to ensure an uninterrupted power supply to citizens struggling in the sweltering heat. He warned that the party would call for a citywide protest if K-Electric failed to mend its ways and stop what he called its oppression of the people.
He further said Karachi contributed to the country’s economy, yet its residents were being made to suffer because of the utility’s poor performance. Calling the city the country’s economic hub, he said it had been plunged into darkness. “When there are eight-hour power outages in the city, how will factories operate in Karachi?”
Monem Zafar accused K-Electric of continuing what he described as an endless cycle of exploitation. He demanded an end to loadshedding and inflated bills, a forensic audit of the company’s accounts and a detailed account of the subsidies it had received over the past 15 years. He said K-Electric received cheap electricity from the national grid but sold it to Karachi’s residents at higher rates, adding that the utility had received Rs1,500 billion in subsidies over the past 20 years without providing people with affordable electricity.
Recalling the company’s privatisation in 2005, he said people had been promised that loadshedding would end, electricity bills would become affordable, and the generation, transmission and distribution systems would improve.
However, 20 years later, power cuts had increased instead of ending, while consumers continued to receive heavy bills, he said. K-Electric had been sold for Rs15 billion, which he said was equivalent to the price of its electricity poles.
He said the company had 1.8 million consumers at the time of privatisation, but the number had since risen to four million, while its income had also increased manifold. Despite this growth, he added, K-Electric was receiving an annual subsidy of Rs164 billion and had become a source of hardship for the city’s residents.
The JI leader also criticized the utility for having the highest line losses in the country. He questioned why entire neighbourhoods were subjected to power cuts when 96 percent of consumers in an area paid their bills and only the remaining four percent failed to do so. According to him, Nepra’s rules did not allow the electricity supply to an entire area to be disconnected over the non-payment of bills by some consumers.
Referring to the recent Gulshan-e-Hadeed tragedy, in which the bodies of an entire family were recovered along with a suicide note, Monem Zafar held the government responsible for poverty-driven suicides in society. He said the incident highlighted the severe hardships faced by people struggling with economic difficulties.
JI leaders Muhammad Ishaq Khan, Sufiyan Dilawar, Engineer Abdul Aziz, JI MPA Muhammad Farooq and others were also present at the protest.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026
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