NEA chief’s crusade 
Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), the country’s sole power distributor, is among the most dysfunctional government bureaucracies, its inefficiency and bloated workforce perhaps matched only by the profligate, but also much more maligned, Nepal Oil Corporation. Just like the corporation, the NEA has mostly been in the news over the past few years for all the wrong reasons. Last year, Nepalis had to put up with up to 14 hours of daily load-shedding and with no major hydro projects scheduled to come online in the next few years, they had been bracing for another long, dark winter. But then, in the middle of this September, Kulman Ghising was appointed the managing director of the flailing NEA. He immediately worked a mini-miracle. Due to rolling power cuts Kathmandu denizens were unsure they would be able to properly celebrate the festival of lights, Tihar. But astonishingly there were no power cuts during the whole of Tihar. People then assumed that the power utility had somehow managed to eke out a few extra kilowatts just for Tihar and power cuts would soon resume. But a week, and then a whole month, passed but there were still no power cuts. 

It was only then that people began to suspect that the new MD at NEA had something to do with it. The dumbfounded media then started to question him how he had managed something that has not been possible for the past two decades. Ghising replied that nothing he was doing was miraculous. All he had done was ‘manage demand better’. In other words, Ghising was able to operate the existing power stations in a way that maximized output and made it possible to adjust electricity supply with demand. But then, a natural question arose: If it was so easy, why weren’t his predecessors at NEA interested in minimizing load-shedding hours and bringing comfort to common folks? The only logical answer is that they were never there to serve the public but only to extract rent, for themselves and for the political masters who appointed them. These previous NEA managers were also beholden to one or the other of the many trade unions in the authority. Ghising wants to end this rent-seeking culture. Naturally, the trade unions, especially those affiliated to Nepali Congress and CPN-UML, want to stop him. Because if he succeeds, their plans to keep milking the authority for personal gains will be foiled; they might even be put under judicial investigation for their past misdeeds.   

This is why Ghising’s crusade to clean up NEA and to end load-shedding not only from the capital city but the entire country deserves broad support. His self-serving detractors must be defeated so that we don’t have to go back to those dark days. For the bad intent of some members of the NEA board is easily established. For instance Ghising wants to establish a separate company for the construction of 335-MW Upper Arun, a model he also wants to follow in other power projects that the authority has been entrusted with. If this happens, there will be much less room for mismanagement of resources for top NEA officials than would be the case if these projects were kept under direct NEA watch. This is why the government should resist this blatant attempt at blackmail and stand firmly behind Ghising. 

 
• nepal electricity authority
 
• nepal oil corporation
 
• power cuts
 
• dysfunctional government bureaucracies
 
• great-job-ghising
 
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