The hundreds of deaths caused by a relentless heat wave have shaken Karachi. The sights of wailing women, crying children and weeping men seem to have made the city forget the miseries it has seen in the past. Morgues in the country’s most populated city are out of space, hospitals have no more beds, and ambulance services have not been able to keep up.
Insiders in the Sindh government say the city’s managers have no clue how to deal with the emergency despite repeated warnings by the meteorological department. The provincial or the federal government did not forewarn the people. Provincial ministers say this is not an issue of competence, and hundreds of people have died in similar heat waves in India and in countries in Europe. But those countries did take proactive measures to be prepared to deal with extreme weather. The Sindh Rangers, who set up more than a dozen relief camps, and the philanthropist Malik Riaz, who announced a Rs 500,000 compensation for each victim’s family, responded to the calamity before the chief minister.
As people bury their dead in the holy month of Ramzan, power outages and a scarcity of water continue to make things worse for the residents of the city.
Before winning 2013 general elections, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had promised his party would end power loadshedding in six months. Khawaja Asif, the minister for power, extended the deadline by two years. Both have now backtracked.
A key reason behind the increasing power shortage is a growing circular debt. In its first year, the PML-N government had cleared the entire circular debt, of over Rs 500 billion, at once. But it is now hovering around Rs 500 billion again. The government claims it has capped the debt to a bearable Rs 250 billion. But they do not include the debt the government owes to public sector entities like Wapda, PSO, and generation companies.
With the advent of Ramzan, the demand for electricity reached 21,000 megawatts. The production was increased to 16,000 megawatts, and that too at the risk of threatening the entire production infrastructure. The installed capacity of electricity production in the country is more than 21,000 megawatts, but the fragile system cannot deliver at a hundred percent.
People’s Party veteran Qamar Zaman Kaira recalls Khawaja Asif’s own written statement to the Supreme Court during PPP’s tenure, in which he questioned why the then government could not produce more than 20,000 megawatts of electricity.
Miftah Ismail, chairman of the board of investment, claims the government will resolve the power crisis by 2017, and loadshedding would be contained in the next two years.
But former Wapda chairman Shamsul Mulk disagrees. “It is unrealistic,” he said. According to him, the downfall of the Pakistani nation began when the government shelved the Kalabagh Dam project in 1988. Wapda had proposed to build the dam by 1994 to be followed by Bhasha Dam in 1998, he said. “We could produce around 10,000 megawatts of electricity from those two sources at the cost of Rs 1.5 per unit. The per unit cost of electricity from thermal power plants is more than Rs 10.”
A source in the Water and Power Ministry said the Wapda had identified more than 50 sites for hydroelectric power generation plants on the Indus rivers system, that could together produce more than 50,000 megawatts of cheap electricity.
The PML-N government could hardly add 500 megawatts of electricity to the national grid during its two years in power. It shelved the Gadani coal power plant, failed to run the Nandipur power plant, and is still waiting for Chinese assistance to launch the Thar Coal plant.
Meanwhile, the opposition parties have announced a countrywide agitation against the federal government. The government responded saying the opposition parties were conspiring against it. The statements from both sides are full of paradoxes and contradictions which further complicate an already complicated situation.
Opposition leader in the National Assembly Khurshid Shah asked Chief Justice Nasirul Mulk to take suo motu notice of the deaths in Karachi. He did not say how the People’s Party provincial government could absolve itself from the blame.
Arshad Abbasi, an adviser in the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), says the recent climatic disaster was an extension of the heat wave in India. He claimed that the massive coal-based power plants near the Pakistani border had made an adverse impact on the environment and disturbed environmental balance. The Pakistani government could have raised the matter before International Arbitrary Court.
Shahzad Raza is an Islamabad-based journalist.
Twitter: @shahzadrez
Insiders in the Sindh government say the city’s managers have no clue how to deal with the emergency despite repeated warnings by the meteorological department. The provincial or the federal government did not forewarn the people. Provincial ministers say this is not an issue of competence, and hundreds of people have died in similar heat waves in India and in countries in Europe. But those countries did take proactive measures to be prepared to deal with extreme weather. The Sindh Rangers, who set up more than a dozen relief camps, and the philanthropist Malik Riaz, who announced a Rs 500,000 compensation for each victim’s family, responded to the calamity before the chief minister.
The installed capacity of electricity production is more than 21,000 megawatts
As people bury their dead in the holy month of Ramzan, power outages and a scarcity of water continue to make things worse for the residents of the city.
Before winning 2013 general elections, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had promised his party would end power loadshedding in six months. Khawaja Asif, the minister for power, extended the deadline by two years. Both have now backtracked.
A key reason behind the increasing power shortage is a growing circular debt. In its first year, the PML-N government had cleared the entire circular debt, of over Rs 500 billion, at once. But it is now hovering around Rs 500 billion again. The government claims it has capped the debt to a bearable Rs 250 billion. But they do not include the debt the government owes to public sector entities like Wapda, PSO, and generation companies.
With the advent of Ramzan, the demand for electricity reached 21,000 megawatts. The production was increased to 16,000 megawatts, and that too at the risk of threatening the entire production infrastructure. The installed capacity of electricity production in the country is more than 21,000 megawatts, but the fragile system cannot deliver at a hundred percent.
People’s Party veteran Qamar Zaman Kaira recalls Khawaja Asif’s own written statement to the Supreme Court during PPP’s tenure, in which he questioned why the then government could not produce more than 20,000 megawatts of electricity.
Miftah Ismail, chairman of the board of investment, claims the government will resolve the power crisis by 2017, and loadshedding would be contained in the next two years.
But former Wapda chairman Shamsul Mulk disagrees. “It is unrealistic,” he said. According to him, the downfall of the Pakistani nation began when the government shelved the Kalabagh Dam project in 1988. Wapda had proposed to build the dam by 1994 to be followed by Bhasha Dam in 1998, he said. “We could produce around 10,000 megawatts of electricity from those two sources at the cost of Rs 1.5 per unit. The per unit cost of electricity from thermal power plants is more than Rs 10.”
A source in the Water and Power Ministry said the Wapda had identified more than 50 sites for hydroelectric power generation plants on the Indus rivers system, that could together produce more than 50,000 megawatts of cheap electricity.
The PML-N government could hardly add 500 megawatts of electricity to the national grid during its two years in power. It shelved the Gadani coal power plant, failed to run the Nandipur power plant, and is still waiting for Chinese assistance to launch the Thar Coal plant.
Meanwhile, the opposition parties have announced a countrywide agitation against the federal government. The government responded saying the opposition parties were conspiring against it. The statements from both sides are full of paradoxes and contradictions which further complicate an already complicated situation.
Opposition leader in the National Assembly Khurshid Shah asked Chief Justice Nasirul Mulk to take suo motu notice of the deaths in Karachi. He did not say how the People’s Party provincial government could absolve itself from the blame.
Arshad Abbasi, an adviser in the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), says the recent climatic disaster was an extension of the heat wave in India. He claimed that the massive coal-based power plants near the Pakistani border had made an adverse impact on the environment and disturbed environmental balance. The Pakistani government could have raised the matter before International Arbitrary Court.
Shahzad Raza is an Islamabad-based journalist.
Twitter: @shahzadrez