Prime Minister, sources said, is unhappy with the performance of Ministry of Water and Power and its attached organisations with respect to management of current crisis which gave political parties a chance to take to the streets. His anger was apparent during the meeting on Monday. Former Secretary Water and Power, Younus Dagha, who successfully dealt with the crisis last year, has also been called to the meeting; and he gave his personal suggestions in this regard.
According to sources, the Prime Minister is worried about the delay in hydel power projects despite appointment of new Wapda Chairman. On April 18, 2017, the Prime Minister had stated that load shedding of 9 hours in the mixed industrial load areas is not acceptable as common man living in those areas will have to bear this excruciating schedule in very harsh weather during Ramazan. The Prime Minister directed the Water and Power Ministry to separate domestic consumers from industrial consumers in mixed feeder areas.
The new Secretary Water and Power, has shifted the responsibility for the current crisis on to his predecessor. According to sources, he argued in the previous meeting of CCoE that the concerned authorities should have anticipated the gap between demand and supply in April 2017 by undertaking a scientific analysis, adding that regular maintenance outages should have been planned to avoid power shortage in the peak demand season.
The Prime Minister observed that load management plan earlier presented to the CCoE was not realistic which has put the government in an embarrassing position. The officials responsible for presenting wrong information about demand and supply of power should be taken to task.
However, on Monday, Secretary Water & Power briefed the meeting on current load management plan, implementation status of planned and ongoing energy projects and enhancement of transmission system. He revealed that during the present Government a total of 9,625MW in 132 Kv and 2,004MW in 11 Kv systems as well as capacity enhancement have been achieved in the transmission system which is unprecedented and is essentially keeping in view new power generation scheduled to come into the national grid and would be allocated to DISCOs in the next nine months. The Chairman Wapda briefed the meeting on progress of Hydel power projects including Dasu, Diamer Bhasha and Mohmand Dam. The Prime Minister directed the Ministry of Water & Power to immediately resolve 'upfront tariff' issues with National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) for different kinds of sources including LNG, solar, coal, furnace oil, diesel and gas.
The Prime Minister further directed that line departments should work out immediate solutions for administrative and legal issues faced in implementation of energy projects on priority. NTDC was directed to pick up pace of work on HVDC transmission lines and other smaller transmission lines projects. He also directed to carry out a comparative study about efficiency of various power sources, for presentation in the next CCoE meeting.
The Prime Minister stated that the government is working on multiple options of power generation so that consumers are provided with uninterrupted power supply. For this purpose, the government has focused on adding base load thermal power projects which shall ensure availability of power all through the year even during lean periods of hydro power generation in 2018 and onwards.
The meeting was attended by Minister for Petroleum & Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Minister for Planning Ahsan Iqbal, Minister for Water & Power Khawaja Muhammad Asif, Chief Minister Punjab Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif, Minister for Information & Broadcasting Ms. Maryum Aurangzeb, Special Assistant to PM Tariq Fatemi and senior officials.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017