CHITRAL: Forty hours long power breakdown in Chitral town has just ended with the lights coming on again to the relief of the thoroughly frustrated people. During this unannounced abrupt power outage, life came to a grinding low as nobody was prepared for such an abrupt and long breakdown. To add insult to injury, no formal official announcement of any kind was made from the concerned quarters, except for a Facebook post of the local MPA about the expected time of restoration of the service.

Like at any time of trial and tribulation, even to the extent at the advent of Ramzan, those who can exploit leap forward to exploit those whom they can. This characterless trait of the society was witnessed in full strength during the two day electricity breakdown in Chitral. Those who had generators lying unused, when they took them to the repair mechanics to get it started, the mechanic started pointing towards faults which were not there, and extracted unduly large amount of money from those who asked for their services. This was disclosed to CN by a witnessing person who himself had know how about generators.

The moral decay in our society has reached it’s pinnacle. People blame those in power for being corrupt (and rightly so) but the fact is that every member of the society is corrupt to the level he/she can reach (save noble exceptions). Any time when we are put on trial, we readily display laxity of character. The most unfortunate part and the reason for this apathy is that no cleric in a mosque mentions about this problem with the society, in their sermons. .. CN report, 01 July 2024