Editorial
Power crisis
Government floundering in response
THE government's latest measure announced to combat the massive power crisis that is crippling the nation, the directive that air conditioning units be prohibited from operating from the hours of 6-11pm, is nothing short of the ridiculous, and suggests a government that is quite out of its depth.
It is true that the government inherited a power crisis, and the people of this country have been patient in waiting for it to be resolved, understanding that these things take time. However, now that it has been in office for well over a year, the government has no excuse for its continuing inability to at least give us a roadmap of what lies ahead.
Even worse than the government's apparent incompetence in dealing with the issue, is the amateurish measures that it periodically has tried to implement in order to relieve the situation. These have included the ill-conceived DST initiative and the directive for reduced business hours for shops.
The anti-AC order is merely the latest in this line of foolishness. In the first place, it will have only a negligible impact on aggregate electricity usage, even if it were enforceable. More to the point, it is totally unenforceable and risks making the government look like a laughing stock.
When the government has failed so miserably when it comes to setting up new power generating plants, fixing and bringing on line the power plants that now lie idle and under-utilised, plugging the endemic systems loss, and cracking down on the numberless illegal connections that proliferate, to try to address the issue with a directive limiting use of air conditioners demonstrates a lack of seriousness in dealing with the problem.
The report yesterday of the suffering of the patients at DMCH due to lack of power saw the crisis reach its lowest ebb. That the situation has been allowed to reach such a sorry pass simply beggars the imagination.
The government is not doing its job, and ordering people to shut off their ACs sounds to us like the worst form of avoidance of responsibility and buck passing, as though the problem is the excessive consumption of electricity in some quarters and not the government's failure to generate power sufficient to meet the people's needs.
The government needs to stop these asinine ad hoc solutions that serve only to make it look clueless, and needs to address the crisis head-on. Right now, the impression that is created by the government's latest plan, is that it is simply floundering in its response to the crisis.
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