The other night our Minister for Power told us that he was giving cheap electricity to over four million people. I believed him because this information must have been provided to him by some reliable source. But then a large number of poor people live near my locality and they use only a single fan and a bulb in the house yet their bill is well over a thousand rupees. The same is true of most middle class people I know who pay heavy bills for their electricity. How is the figure of "four million poor getting cheap electricity" worked out is known only to WAPDA officials. It pains me to write that our Minister for Power has not given serious thought to saving electricity. He has no time to read newspapers or watch TV where useful suggestions are given to save power. His scheme to advance watches by one hour has misfired. The summer is here and loadshedding is on the increase. It is likely to only get worse once the millions of ACs are switched on. They consume a lot of power and nobody knows how WAPDA is going to cope with that increase. A villager friend of mine tells me that in his area near Faisalabad, the use of 'kundas' is on the increase and the WAPDA staff is hesitant to catch them. -COL (Retd) R.M. AKHTAR, Lahore, via e-mail, April 25.