Abid Sher Ali, Minister of State for Water and Power, has set a fox among the chickens, but we hope he is not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. After reviewing electricity bill collection statistics from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), the junior minister announced that extreme default meant power supply to seven districts of KP would be cut via 13 feeders until the provincial government gets tough on electricity thieves and defaulters in those districts. In his statement, Mr Ali revealed some shocking statistics, including that in some areas, out of thousands of consumers, only several dozen were paying their bills, e.g. in Norang, Bannu, where the minister said that out of 4,386 connections, only 263 were paying bills. The list was long and left KP ministers apoplectic with rage. They say the federal government deliberately targets the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) coalition in KP. However, these same ministers got an earful from Mr Ali who claims many of them shield the thieves in order to preserve their constituencies. The accusations are not the first of their kind. However, cutting power to entire districts is certainly unprecedented and unjustly penalizes bill-paying consumers, no matter how few they may be. Responding to allegations that Punjab has the highest rate of theft, Federal Minister for Water and Power Khawaja Asif pointed out that 83,000 cases were registered against defaulters and thieves in Punjab while fewer than 3,000 cases were registered in KP despite the higher number of defaulters. According to a national report from 2012, Punjab also had the highest rate of recovery, more than 90 percent across the board, of all the provinces. Pakistan has perhaps the highest technical line loss, bill default and theft in the world, approximately 42 percent. This is unsustainable since these have knock-on effects — electricity being the basic requirement of industry and homes — and feed into circular debt. Ironically, the governments, both federal and provincial, are the biggest defaulters on bills, something Mr Ali may want to look into, but political partisanship in this matter is distasteful since the issue affects the whole country. If Mr Ali’s figures are to be believed, bill-paying consumers in the country are paying for thousands of illegal electricity connections and defaulters. The answer to this conundrum lies in collecting outstanding dues and not allowing circular debt to reach the levels it did when the government took power last year, over Rs 500 billion. This must be coupled with changing the power generation mix. Coal is a viable short-term alternative, as is nuclear, however the most promising avenue is investment in renewable energy resources that can be community driven and owned. In the meantime, drastic actions like Mr Ali’s will remain inevitable so that bill-paying consumers are not forced to cover the losses incurred by thieves and defaulters. *