Meet Senator Samina Mumtaz Zehri.

An accomplished lady. A lawyer by education, she progressed to enrol on Sindh’s High Court in 2012 and eventually was elected as a senator in Pakistan’s Senate in 2021. Indeed every youth’s aspiration to embark on a successful career. But arguably her most successful accomplishment, little doubt as a result of her family’s political heritage, was to be appointed as a director for HUBCO.

HUBCO, along with its subsidiary companies, makes it the largest of Pakistan’s numerous Independent Power Producers (IPPs), who over the last few decades have established private electricity production facilities to sell the electricity produced to the Pakistan government. In capitalistic ideological theory which espouses unrestricted freedom of ownership, the principles of which govern Pakistan, it’s all well and good.

But the reality that has resulted is nothing short of legalised criminality and a system of injustice and oppression being imposed upon the masses of Pakistan.

The contracts which the IPPs have signed with the Pakistan government are no ordinary deals, where two parties enter into a business arrangement in a win-win scenario. Here there is only one winner, the other being a clear loser.

The IPPs have signed sovereign guarantees with the state of Pakistan, where the state has to make payments to the IPPs at consistently exorbitant unit rates of electricity. Further these payments have to be in US Dollars, and not the ever weakening Rupee. And the biggest crime of all – the payments made to the IPPs are not based upon the electricity actually provided to the electricity grid, but rather it is paid on the basis of the declared generation capacity of the IPPs, known as capacity payments. So if a plant provides 200MW of electricity to the state, but has a total generation capacity of 1000MW, the IPP will be paid by the Pakistan government – or rather ultimately the Pakistan masses – for the full 1000MW, in US Dollars, at ever increasing rates.

The result? IPPs have been one of the most lucrative businesses which Pakistan’s powerful political families, business mafias and the like have entered into, with the country’s IPPs collectively earning an annual $5bn, equivalent to one tenth of Pakistan’s budget. On average to date, they have made up to an eightfold return on their investments, with further guaranteed windfall profits set to pour into their coffers for years to come.

Indeed such rich elite of Pakistan now figuratively and literally sit alongside the world’s wealthiest. The recent Titan submersible that tragically imploded on its way to explore the Titanic wreck, had on board Shahzada Dawood and his son from Pakistan’s Dawood group, in company with Western billionaires, each paying a staggering sum of $250,000 to embark on the expedition. The Dawood Hercules Group, one of Pakistan’s most powerful and wealthiest that includes foreign US investors, owns several of Pakistan’s IPPs, including a share of HUBCO.

All the whilst the common man is now suffering tremendously, with electricity bills surpassing the monthly salaries of many, leaving them to cut back drastically on so many essentials such as education for their children, food, electricity etc, leaving tens of millions in a state of despair and terror on how to survive and make ends meet on a daily basis.