Electricity Load-Shedding in Rawalpindi

Introduction:
Electricity load shedding in Pakistan has increased manifold. Minister of water and power Raja Pervaiz Ashraf assured that electricity load shedding would be done according to time schedule. He assured that electricity load shedding will finish by the end of the year 2009 but instead it is doubled what it was in the past year 2009. It is big failure of the government of Pakistan. No country can make progress without electricity. Here I want to reveal one big waste of electricity by WAPDA, LESCO and other cities electricity board employees. One low grade LESCO employee told me that he is getting 2,100 units free electricity per month. He told that senior officers are getting 7,000 units and more free electricity per month. So, these employees are getting free electricity equal to their salaries. All this free electricity is being wasted on numerous air conditioners or selling to other rich people. People of advanced countries cannot imagine living in such circumstances for a single day. I have never seen such an intense electricity load-shedding during my whole life.

Background:
The elections of 2008 saw the PPP government coming to power. With it came hope for change and a shift of policies towards the favor of the people. What a big mistake that turned out to be. The present government is being touted as one of the worst ever to have ruled Pakistan. Take for example the promises made by the Water and Power minister to the public that Load shedding will be no more by December 2009. It is 2012 now, and were heading towards 2013. The crisis has worsened. The government has now pretty much given up and seems helpless with no plan to counter the crisis. Its a strange situation. One week, there will be load shedding and everything will seem to have been fixed. And the next week, load shedding strikes again with around 8-10 hours in major cities and up to 12-14 hours in rural areas. After February 2008 election, ruling government Water and Power development minister promised publicly that after 31st December 2009 there will be no load shedding at all in Pakistan. 31st December 2009 came and went but load shedding

crisis has taken a form of national disaster with cities facing up to 8-10 hours of load shedding and rural areas facing up to 12-14 hours of load shedding till today.

Aims and objectives:

First of all, there stands an urgent need to address the crisis wisely. Government should purchase cheap electricity from china and Iran. PEPCOs performance should be regularly monitored by the government to eliminate any loopholes in its effective functioning. Moreover, steps must be taken to prevent frequent labour union strikes of LESCO and KESC so as to ensure effective power generation activity. Lastly, the government should chalk out stringent plans to build in more dams which will be a positive step in electricity generation. Kalabagh is the example of it.

Research methodology:
We are going to make twenty-five copies of our questionnaire which would have about eight to ten questions. We will then distribute them among the students of Air University aged between 18-23 to get their point of view. They are basically going to represent the opinion of the youth of Pakistan. Other than the questionnaire, we will also carry out interviews of WAPDA and other government officers related to the field. Every sort of media; newspapers, television and internet will be a source of getting more information regarding to our topic of research. We will then tabulate this data to find results and after this we will write a report giving suggestions about where the problem actually lies.

Timeline
The first part of the project is the research proposal which would be completed by 18th of April 2012. First part of the project includes designing of a proposal, indicating its aims and objectives and then setting up our steps of methodology. The second part would be the field research in which we will design a questionnaire, get it filled and tabulate its results. This would be completed by 25th of April 2012. The third part includes report writing of our research proposal which would be done by 2nd of May 2012. The final presentation would be given on 10th May 2012.

Activity division
Designing a research proposal:
1) Title of research 2) Introduction 3) Background of the problem 4) Aims and objectives 5) Research methodology 6) Timeline

Field research:
1) Designing a questionnaire 2) Interview 3) Data tabulation 4) Data analysis 5) Visual representation

Report writing:
1) Introduction/ background of the problem 2) Aims and objectives 3) Research methodology 4) Result 5) Discussion 6) Suggestions and recommendations

Presentation