Category: News

Sometime back I blogged about Karadeniz Powership which had set sail for Pakistani shores. Now it has reached Pakistan and is docked at Karachi. To the common man this might sound as a great relief, but actually it is just another way of fleecing the already over-burdened people of Pakistan by the incompetent Government. Well it is actually a spillover of incompetence of the previous Governments, but this one is no different, in fact it is worse. ( Shoot, I have started rambling again )

The statistics say this power solution by the Awami or People’s Government is by far the most expensive. According to PEPCO, Karkey Karadeniz Electrik Uretim of Turkey signed the deal for providing Electricity to our beloved country for 5.98 cents per unit, but that was May 2009. Now it is November 2010, and almost 2011. Add in the current price of furnace oil, the corruption included in the whole process, and the figure shoots over to 18 cents per unit.  Ask a 3rd grade student to do the math and he/she will tell you it comes to around Rs. 15.66 , actually Rs. 6.29 higher then the current average price per unit!

Only a People’s Government can think of such solutions, because the people get to pay the money, the Government collects the money, pays to the M/S Karadeniz and pockets some of it, thereby introducing another acute spate of circular debt. The agreement is valid for six years and it doesn’t take a genius’s IQ to figure out what the fuel costs will be in another six years, well simply they will skyrocket. But that will not affect us, because we have enough water to build dams on, enough coal reserves to be declared the biggest on Earth, enough Wind corridors and Sun belts. Only if we can agree on building the darned Kalabagh Dam, putting a coal fired power plant on Thar coal or making use of ample sunshine or wind. But the question is, “who will bell the cat?”