Things are pretty black these days in Pakistan, in a literal fashion. The whole country, yes the complete whole country from Karachi to Khyber plunged into darkness and remained so for a long time. What it means in this age is total collapse of the functioning of a nation. Things are not going to improve. 15 to 20 hours of load-shedding is going to become a routine for some weeks or may be a month in coming days. This will be the worst power deficit crisis and a blackout-like situation in the wake of the acute shortage of furnace oil. The ministry of Water and Power (MoW&P) has informed Prime Minister about this.
Here are couple of simple facts about this power crisis:
* The demand of the country stands at 14,000MW whereas generation stands at only 7,000MW.
* The circular debt has risen to Rs300 billion and its receivables have touched the staggering figure of Rs590 billion.
Pakistanis don’t pay any taxes and there are no exports because our industry doesn’t produce anything due to load-shedding. So government has no option but to print notes, in order to keep the country running, but that has its limits too and we are watching the results. At the power generation and power management arena, everything seems in disarray. The Faisalabad power plant is non-operational due to the non-availability of furnace oil, and almost all other power generation units like Hubco, Kapco, Jamshoro, Muzzafargarh plant have gone way down in their power generation. These breakdowns and falling electricity generation is going to quash this government of Nawaz Sharif very soon. They won’t survive this time. If they want to survive, then they must utilize all possible resources to minimize electricity loadshedding across the country.