It is better to have electricity 24x7 but only 50 watts to run a fridge, phone charger and one lightbulb, than to have electricity 3 hours a day but be running 1000 watts of airconditioners.
I guess perhaps energy theft was too hard to police?
“And there was no penalty for not paying—there were no regulations allowing the utilities to cut off a customer’s power.”
Collecting more money in a corrupt organization doesn’t means they will automatically get a more effective distribution system.
People wont vote for them if they increased the price by 5x.
Instead, people (especially the poorest) would need to put effort into tracking their own usage - and understanding that an airconditioner uses far more electricity than a phone charger.