especially for a nation that is teetering from one crisis to the next while attempting to avoid a potential default.
Such an amount may be used for significant public good by a competent government to build roads, fund hospitals, establish schools, or simply pay off the national debt.
But if our guardians are to be believed, this is a rough estimate of the country’s annual theft and recovery losses.
The sheer size of it makes it appear like the ultimate con: how else would one explain allowing some groups of people to use free electricity for years that is worth hundreds of billions of dollars?
While the government encouraged this theft by either using taxpayer money or by increasing taxes on law-abiding persons to cover the wrongdoings of others.
Few cared as long as the government was footing the majority of the bill. The inflation-weary are asking challenging questions, which the authorities are finding challenging to respond to, as the weight has started to shift to the public.
the caretaker administration accused some power distribution network employees of having “jet-black integrity” and the politicised management of power distribution firms of enabling this open theft of public funds. It was an accusatory statement to make. The general public has a right to know why no action was ever taken to hold such individuals accountable, particularly in light of the hundreds of billions of rupees in losses that were being reported.
It is hoped that there won’t be any more delays in obtaining results now that the administration has made the decision to pursue the parasitic components in the electricity distribution network.
Additionally, it promises a three-pronged approach that will mobilise the police and the government to undertake a crackdown in high-theft regions in order to reduce theft and recovery losses. All of them seem promising on paper, but their effectiveness cannot be evaluated until there are findings to analyse. It must be emphasised that overhauling the power sector’s recoveries in a short amount of time will not be simple. In local economies where stealing and refusing to pay are rampant, the supply of “free” electricity has probably caused considerable distortions.
Therefore, there will be significant upheaval caused by the abrupt imposition of high electricity rates in these places during a time when the economy is already unstable, and authorities may not be able to control the ensuing social unrest alone.
This, however, cannot be an excuse for continuing to put off exercise. Due to successive governments’ propensity to put off dealing with the problem, theft and recovery losses have reached the hundreds of billions of dollars range.
The authorities must now make sure that billpayers won’t be defrauded of their money.
