KARACHI: The Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) on Tuesday announced that it would “renew” its protest campaign against a growing power crisis in the city and inflated electricity bills.

The party said it would stage protests in all towns on Saturday against the K-Electric.

Addressing a press conference outside the KE headquarters in Gizri, JI Karachi chief Munim Zafar, accompanied by people from different walks of life, warned that Karachiites reserved the right to protest outside Governor House and or the KE headquarters, if the private company didn’t place its house in order.

“The Jamaat will also approach courts against the power outages in the city because the outages on illogical grounds are causing adverse effects on mental health and productivity of a larger portion of the population in the city,” he said.

He referred to “hefty bills” and “excessive tariff” by the KE saying that the JI would attend the public hearing to be held on May 9 by the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority over the proposal to increase power tariff.

“We ask Nepra to pay heed to consumers’ concerns and pains as well, instead of playing the role of a facilitator to the KE in its wrongdoings,” said the JI chief.

“There’s a long list of failures on the part of the KE management after the KESC was privatised. The then KESC was privatised to end loadshedding, line losses and increase production. However, the entity has rather increased loadshedding, line losses and decreased production of electricity.”

The KE had also “failed miserably” when it came to promises about investment in its infrastructure and production despite the fact that its consumer base had been expending continuously, he added.

He said that a letter had also been written to the chairman of Nepra highlighting violations of Nepra decisions by the KE.

“The KE is flogging Karachiites with loadshedding of up to 14 hours in some areas on the pretext of the ‘aggregate technical and commercial losses’, which itself is a violation of the Nepra decision,” said the JI chief.

He claimed that the KE had no ethical, legal or administrative power to use loadshedding as a tool for collective punishment to consumers. “However, the KE enjoys the colonial era powers illegally and unconstitutionally with full impunity,” he added.

Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2024