A worker walks at the Bin Qasim Power Station, some 35km east of Karachi yesterday.
KARACHI: Since Pakistan’s biggest electricity company was privatised, its headquarters have been looted, its employees kidnapped and the government tried to arrest its boss.
It’s been a roaring success.
Power cuts lasting 12 hours a day or more have devastated Pakistan’s economy. The loss of millions of jobs has fuelled unrest in a nuclear-armed nation already beset by a Taliban insurgency.
The only city bucking the trend is the violent megacity of Karachi, Pakistan’s financial heart — thanks to Tabish Gauhar and his team at the Karachi Electricity Supply Company (KESC).
“It has consumed every ounce of my energy,” 42-year-old Gauhar said in his wood-panelled office. “But we have helped millions of people.”
The new government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif won an election in May partly because it promised to fix the power cuts. Now many are wondering if KESC’s successful privatisation will be repeated elsewhere.
The government is due to release its energy strategy this week. One official said it was going to look closely at privatising more state-run power companies.
Pakistan’s power companies share similar woes. Staff is often corrupt and influential families won’t pay bills. The government sells power below the cost of production but pays subsidies late or not at all. Plants cannot afford fuel.
At the state-run Peshawar Electricity Supply Company, the majority of staff are illiterate, most new hires are relatives of existing staff and 37 percent of power generated was stolen, a 2011 USAID-funded audit found.
KESC had all the same problems when Dubai-based private equity firm Abraaj Capital bought a controlling stake in 2008. Gauhar and his Abraaj team decided to slash the workforce by a third, cut off non-payers and destroy illegal connections.
It started a war.
Redundant employees offered to work for free because they made such fat kickbacks. When management refused, thousands of protesters ransacked KESC’s headquarters. They camped outside for months.
Gunmen attacked Gauhar’s house. Workers crossed picket lines every day on the floor of police cars and more than 200 KESC employees were injured.
“We felt very lonely then,” said Gauhar, who moved from CEO to chairman of KESC earlier this year. “When I used to visit one of our injured employees in the hospital it was hard for me to look them in the eye.”
Many in the populist pro-labour government vilified KESC. Later, legislators tried to arrest Gauhar for not attending sub-committee meetings in the capital.
Reuters
