Energy crisis pulls plug on Pakistan

THE Taleban may be plotting bombings, and the economy is on the brink. But these days, the single biggest woe tormenting Pakistanis is as basic as an electric light bulb.

The country is in the throes of an energy crisis, with Pakistanis now enduring about 12 hours of power cuts a day, a gruelling ordeal that is melting ice, stalling air-cooling fans and enraging an already exhausted populace just as the blast furnace of summer gets started.

In an effort to stem that frustration, Pakistan's government held an emergency meeting last week, bringing together top bureaucrats from across the country. But instead of easing the problem, it aggravated it, ordering power-saving measures that seemed calculated to smother some Pakistanis' last remaining pleasures.

"They are playing a joke on us," said Amina Ali, the mother of a bride at a wedding hall that was under orders to close early as part of the new energy-saving restrictions. Her brother chimed in: "The Pakistani people are a toy in the hands of the government."

The crisis is a tangle of unmet responsibilities, and unravelling it will not be easy. The finger of blame travels back a long way in time involving governments that are incapable of planning ahead, bureaucrats who take bribes, even ordinary people who steal about 30 per cent of all the power produced. The tribal areas in the west, for example, have no meters and have never paid for power.

The result is about 1.3 billion a year in energy that is generated but not paid for.

"There is nobody in Islamabad who is working on a coherent, integrated plan," said one industry executive who asked not to be identified. "The discussion just keeps going in circles."

Which was why it seemed particularly galling when the government ordered stores to be shut at the prime shopping time, 8pm, and wedding halls to close by 10pm. Weddings are important entertainment in Pakistan, and go on late into the night, with dancing, lights and finery.

"Should we just sit at home in the darkness and go to sleep?" sputtered Ali, waiting outside the Mughal-e-Azam banquet hall, whose owners had been warned the night before that it should be closed by 10pm. One of the owners, Moazzam Ilyas, was nervously trying to coax the event along, even though at 9.45pm, the groom had still not arrived.

In Punjab, Pakistan's most populous province, the power failures have been disastrous for small businesses. Ali Raza, a printing press owner, has watched his once-prospering label business sag as power cuts bite into printing time, delaying orders and frustrating clients.

Late last year, he sold two large Swedish presses and fired half his 35-member staff. He has given up much of his upper-middle-class lifestyle, selling his Toyota, quitting his gym and limiting purchases of fruit and meat.

As his life and business shrink, so does his determination to stay in Pakistan. "I should move from here before I have nothing," he said, sitting in his office next to a blank computer monitor and motionless fan. "Staying means committing suicide."

Poorer Pakistanis have it worse. In Lahore's old city, an ancient warren of narrow streets full of cave-like workshops for metal and leather, the sound of circular saws stops suddenly at 4pm. Candles are lighted. The only noise is the tapping of hammers.

"There's no income; we are very worried," said Mirza Arif Beg, 33, a metal polisher whose family business is collapsing. "We feel helpless. Should we do crime?"

Stealing electricity seems to be an option available mostly to those with enough money to afford a bribe. It also might require some relation to the fabled meter men, who are paid a pittance but are reported to live well off the proceeds.

"They have big houses, big cars," said Muhamed Baderi, a plastic-tube maker who said he knew a metal-works company that regularly bribed its meter man to reduce its electric bill. "They know the art of meter tampering."

Those who cannot afford a bribe have to pay or face being shut off. Muhamed Faqir, a 45-year-old buffalo farmer with five children, said he had to borrow from relatives to pay $50 after his power was cut for eight days during the winter.

A basement full of cobblers in the old city, when asked to describe where they thought the crisis originated, simply cursed their leaders.

The opposition party, led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, has played on that anger, trumpeting the crisis to score political points, even though its government's record in the 1990s was no better.

Last week, city government officials marched around Lahore's most important markets at 8pm, demanding that merchants shutter their stores. Men with sticks from the local trade union made the final argument for those who were slow to comply. "We want to shop," said a woman glaring at the lowered gates of a shoe store. "People don't get up early, and it's hot. Now I'll have to come back on Monday."

The restrictions look menacing, but few believe they will last. Follow-through has never been Pakistan's strong point, and the power-saving measures seemed unlikely to be an exception.