Re: KESC Chaos
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Silly Billy wrote:
as KESC is privately owned now and they can do little.
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It is wrong to believe that government cannot do anything as they can. It is responsibility of the government to do something and they should.
One has to realize that what a group of people (like people of Karachi) is/was already getting something (like electricity, water or gas), people feels less when it improves but feel most when it get deteriorated. When thing improves for whatever reason (due to hard work or just due to luck), nation gives credit to the government of the time. However, when condition deteriorates for whatever reasons, nation blames the government of the time.
No rulers (be it a politician or dictator) could afford to ignore people feelings (other then at their own expense) if utilities for the people deteriorate or get effected, as no rulers would like people to have genuine reasons, not based on propaganda but by their own personal experience, to believe that rulers do not care for them.
There are two types of entities privatized. One is those providing utilities (like water, electricity or gas) and thus directly affects people whereas other entities are those that are not utilities (like steel mill, ports, airlines etc) that does not directly affects people
It is one requirement of utility privatization that the new management provides the service at least to the level immediately before privatization and improves on that. If new management is not doing that, they are incompetent and government cannot (and should not) leave the entity with them.
Actually, all utility providers work with the consent of the government. If something that is utility was always in private hand (never in the hand of government and thus not in private hand due to privatization) still, if it start getting deteriorated, it become duty of the government to interfere by either nationalizing it or imposing heavy fine on the management of that utility. Government can also cancel their license and pass their services (along with infrastructure) to other competent management.
I think that government should take KESC away from the new management. If appropriate, government should also keep the money new management paid (KESC privatization proceeds) as they showed incompetent of running KESC, something they must have promised when they made bid for KESC, hence they lied to the government about their ability (or doing something purposefully, just to make the government look bad). On top of that, government should fine the new management on pretext that they have given a lot of pain to the people of Karachi, something worse then they experienced before.
If KESC blames that there is sabotage by vested interest making KESC run ineffectively and enquiry proves that, then it is duty of the government to give full protection to KESC and hang those sabotaging in public (as sabotaging utility of nation citizen is probably a bigger crime then of a traitor)
If government decides that re-nationalization is appropriate, then after that, government can re-privatize KESC to those that can promise to provide reasonable service to people of Karachi and improve that service to the satisfaction of the people. If any management cannot provide adequate service, they should not take responsibility of something that is utility to the people.
If government is not doing that, I believe that it is lack of sensitiveness amongst the government functionary and I believe that this should get sort out as soon as possible, before government loses all sympathy for them. [That is within days not weeks or months]
[It would be very unfortunate that if people lose faith on present government functionaries, they would find themselves between two devils (present government and past two corrupt duos). As for MMA, they are worse then two corrupt duos as these duos were looting and plundering the country (keeping the country poor and underdeveloped while making themselves rich and prosperous) while MMA along with keeping the country poor and underdeveloped, wants to make the county slave to their whim too.
I think that if that happens, Musharaf should impose Martial law, getting rid of whatever democracy we have and try to sort things out. That, if he is sincere as he seems to be].