Arshad Mahmood Awan
Pakistan is back where it has been before — staring at a power shortfall crossing 11,000 megawatts, pointing fingers at fuel disruptions, plant outages and grid constraints, while the deeper wound goes untreated. The immediate triggers are familiar: zero RLNG supply, idle plants, and a transmission network unable to carry surplus power from where it is generated to where it is needed. But to call this a crisis of the moment would be dishonest. This is a crisis of design, and it has been building for over a decade.
For eleven to twelve years, the people responsible for Pakistan’s energy future have understood one basic truth: you cannot keep adding generation capacity while leaving distribution companies broken, transmission lines weak and system management in the hands of administrators who treat electricity as a file rather than a fuel. And yet that is precisely what has happened. The generation side attracted investment, political attention and international financing. The distribution side attracted promises, committees and delay. Today, the country carries the consequences of that choice on its back.
Pakistan now has around 46,000 megawatts of installed capacity on paper. In practice, the figure that matters is far smaller. Key plants are offline. Fuel is unavailable for RLNG-dependent stations carrying roughly 5,500 megawatts of potential output. The Neelum-Jhelum hydroelectric project remains shut. Guddu is running below its rated capacity. Hydel generation is constrained because provincial water releases are lower than needed. Central Punjab is bearing the heaviest load-shedding because transmission limits prevent power from being moved efficiently across the grid. The numbers tell a story of systemic mismatch — a system built wide but not built right.
This did not happen by accident. Generation projects are visible, cuttable-ribbon affairs. They produce announcements, ceremonies and credit. Distribution reform produces none of that. Reducing line losses, fixing billing systems, eliminating ghost connections, disciplining high-loss feeders, holding distribution companies to commercial standards — these are unglamorous, administratively demanding and politically thankless tasks. So they were deferred. And deferred again. And now the sector sits with expensive capacity that cannot be fully used, and consumers sitting in the dark who cannot understand why a country with tens of thousands of megawatts cannot keep the lights on.
The government’s appeal for night-time conservation is the right short-term response to a tight situation. Consumers and businesses have little choice but to adjust while fuel supply chains remain disrupted. But conservation is a coping mechanism, not a solution. A power system of this scale cannot be managed through emergency appeals every time an RLNG cargo is delayed or a major turbine develops a fault. If crisis communication is the government’s primary instrument of energy management, then the sector has already failed at its basic institutional purpose.
The more uncomfortable question is about the people making decisions. Pakistan’s power sector requires technical depth, commercial discipline and operational urgency. These are not qualities typically found in the bureaucratic culture that has historically governed the sector. The same administrative habits, the same reliance on generalist officers rotating through technical portfolios, the same comfort with meetings over execution — these patterns repeat across governments of every political colour. The present arrangement appears no different. The recurring failure to align generation, transmission and distribution in any coherent operational framework suggests that the decision-making chain is still not led by people who understand the sector from the inside.
Distribution companies remain the most damaging weak point. The losses they carry are not merely commercial inefficiencies — they are structural subsidies to theft, poor governance and political protection. Economic load management on high-loss feeders, while unavoidable in the short term, is also an admission that basic enforcement has failed. When billing systems do not work, when recovery is poor and when feeder-level accountability is absent, every supply disruption multiplies into prolonged suffering for ordinary consumers. These are not engineering failures. They are governance failures dressed up in engineering language.
Pakistan does not suffer from a shortage of electricity plans. Studies, reports, sector assessments and reform roadmaps have been produced in quantities that could fill warehouses. What is missing is execution. Demand projections running to 2035 already show how severe the pressure will become if peak requirements continue rising without serious demand-side management, grid investment and distribution reform. The difference between a power sector that holds together and one that collapses is not a matter of more planning. It is a matter of whether the reforms that everyone agrees are necessary are actually implemented — before the next crisis, not after it.
The immediate tasks are clear enough. Fuel supply must be restored. Idle plants must be brought back online. Transmission constraints in Central Punjab and elsewhere must be addressed as operational emergencies, not future agenda items. These things must happen now, and the relevant institutions must be held responsible for making them happen on a fixed timeline.
But the lasting solution lies elsewhere. Discos must be reformed with genuine commercial discipline and real accountability. Line losses must come down, and the political protection that high-loss feeders currently enjoy must be withdrawn. Grid strengthening must be treated as infrastructure investment with the same urgency as generation expansion once received. And the sector must be led by professionals who have earned their positions through technical and commercial competence rather than administrative seniority or political convenience.
Pakistan has spent years paying for half-reforms. It has paid in circular debt that grows faster than revenues. It has paid in idle capacity charges for plants producing nothing. It has paid in industrial losses from unreliable supply and in household misery from load-shedding that never fully ends. Installed capacity on a spreadsheet means nothing to a factory that cannot run its machinery or a family that cannot cool its home in May.
The power sector does not need another explanation of why things went wrong. Pakistanis already know. What the sector needs, and what the country deserves, is competent execution by people who treat electricity as a national emergency rather than a departmental responsibility. That change, more than any new plant or policy paper, is what will determine whether the lights stay on.
