Minister of State for Power Abid Sher Ali claimed this in the National Assembly on Thursday during the question-hour. He also claimed that duration of load shedding has reduced to two hours for urban areas and four hours for rural areas. The minister said that due to increased generation capacity, no load-shedding was carried out in the country from 1st September to 10th September. However, some DISCOs carried out load-shedding due to their own system constraints and low recovery in high loss areas, he said.
He said that additional megawatts of power will be added to the national grid by November and December which will help rid the country of power outages. The process of system up-gradation is also underway to reduce the line losses and transmission lines would be upgraded by March next year. He informed the House that the first turbine of Neelum-Jhelum Hydel Power Project will be commissioned in March next year while the entire project is going to complete by July next year.
Minister for Law and Justice Zahid Hamid informed the House that National Accountability Bureau (NAB) recovered Rs 36.278 billion from January 2013 to March 2017 while 582 corruption cases were settled through plea bargain during the period. According to details, the NAB recovered Rs 7.018 billion in 2013; Rs 3.544 billion in 2014; Rs 12.097 billion in 2015; Rs 12.722 billion in 2016 and Rs 0.897 billion by March this year.
The NAB settled 45 cases through plea bargain in 2013; 71 cases in 2014; 172 cases in 2015; 224 cases in 2016 and 70 cases so far by March this year. Minister of State for Petroleum Jam Kamal told the House that eight new oil and gas discoveries have so far been made in the country this year.
Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab Ahmed informed the House that 14,000 additional polling stations will be established for the 2018 general elections to facilitate the voters. He said the government also plans to set up separate polling stations for men and women in the next election. Earlier, the Speaker National Assembly expressed displeasure over absence of senior officials of Pakistan Postal Services from the National Assembly gallery during the question-hour. Minister for Postal Services Maulana Amir Zaman later explained to the Speaker that some senior officials of his ministry were on foreign trips and that's why the department was being represented by junior officers in the Parliament.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017