I recently received my electricity bill and had to be revived with a cold glass of water on seeing the unbelievable amount staring me in the face. I showed the offending document to a friend, who added fuel to fire by expressing his annoyance at not being made privy to my becoming an industrialist - I could only respond by telling him that I was nowhere near to owning a darned factory and that the bill was for my residential connection.
I was advised to visit a one window customer care facility set up by the Islamabad Electric Supply Corporation (IESCO) in one of the sectors and went to the place with a lot of misgivings. The subject counter was empty and a polite query from a person loitering nearby elicited an abuse and a shout aimed at someone somewhere on the premises. A five-minute wait having produced no result, I muttered an unprintable curse and walked away from the office, my head roiling with ugly thoughts. A question that kept cropping up as I trudged home was, why did the citizens in this ‘land of the pure’ have to pay – and, that too, exorbitantly, for a utility that was denied to them for most part of the day and night.
The other day, an acquaintance living in rural Islamabad called up the IESCO complaint to ask as to when the power hide and seek in their area was likely to cease. He was amused to hear the reply from the person, who picked up the telephone: “Sir, we are suffering too, as we are going through a period of forced loadshedding controlled by Central Grid Control Centre in Islamabad.”
Not surprisingly, nationwide riots are on the increase, as the suffering millions experience the rigours of loadshedding. And while the first tendrils of smoke appear on the national landscape, our Prime Minister seeks a pat on the back from the opposition for successfully completing four years of his rule (read misrule).
The crucial question is: Whether the President, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Power have ever experienced the darkness and the heat that now appears to be the fate of the masses? In their intoxicated state of power, they should lend an ear to the unrest that is even now manifesting itself across the land. What they have, perhaps, naively overlooked is the fact that power riots may well be the beginning of a conflagration that has all the elements to spiral out of control - and Pakistan in its present fragile state cannot withstand such a crisis.
A sui gas pipeline was laid along Simly Dam Road a couple of years ago, but some communities within a distance of five kilometres from this source are condemned to lead a ‘gas less’ existence. A friend, who lives in one such community, approached the gas company, but was informed that he would have to deposit more than Rs20 million for a pipeline to reach the families living in the area. I would have ignored the story on the basis that gas connectivity has to be paid for by the consumers, had not a ruling party luminary and legislator, obtained the facility much before the general public in a classic example of ‘leading from the front’.
And now to the slogan, “Islamabad, the Beautiful” emblazoned across banners and hoardings that adorn the broad avenues in our capital city. This slogan will soon have to be modified into something appropriate that synchs with the heaps of refuse and polythene bags that clutter the green belts or the stinking sewerage that has polluted the streams, once teeming with fish. While it is the CDA that must be held responsible for the trash that mars the natural beauty of this city, a part of the blame must be apportioned to the residents of the area whose sense of civic responsibility appears to be on the wane.
Now to education - an elite school in Islamabad has, reportedly, made it a practice of charging for year books and not delivering the said item to students. This same institution collects fees on four months basis, but seeks the next payment after expiry of only three months. A friend, who is good with numbers, tells me that this may be a convenient way to grab an additional one month’s profit from investments. This then is the ugly commercial face of our private education system, succinctly brought to the fore by the phrase: “When education becomes a saleable commodity and national decisions are made for personal gains, then be it known that the end is near.”
The writer is a freelance columnist.