If there is an indicator of corruption afflicting government-run power distribution companies, it is the Ministry of Water and Power’s confession that the consumers were being bamboozled into paying much higher electricity charges through inflated and even fake bills. This is being done to cover their losses resulting from non-payment of bills in Fata, Sindh and KPK where the kunda culture has spread its tentacles. Meanwhile, the law-abiding public is suffering twice; they are paying an exorbitant sum of money for electricity they are not consuming. The billing goes into thousands of rupees in the face of over 20 hours of loadshedding.

Though the power companies ought to have recovered the losses from these areas by stamping out illegal connections, it is a pity that they adopted the easy way of fleecing the average man who already is hard put eking out a living. The federal government is of course complicit as no serious efforts have been initiated to bring the culprits to book. Now that the confession has been made, one expects the PPP setup to at least pull up the officers concerned to lead a crackdown on kunda connections, make the recoveries and charge the consumers only for what they are getting.