Cabinet coordination body formed to cope with power crisis

Federal Minister for Water and Power, Raja Pervez Ashraf, has said that the government, taking immediate notice of present power shortage in the country, has formed a Cabinet Co-ordination Committee which will work on war footings to overcome existing power crisis.
Talking to reporters here on Monday after inaugurating the 20th International Conference on Irrigation and Drainage at Aiwan-i-Iqbal, Ashraf said the present power shortage in the country is because of widening gap between supply and demand.
However, he said that the government had already executed a number of power generation projects and load shedding will be eradicated from the country by the end of December 2009. After completion of new projects, 6,000MW electricity will be added to the National Grid, which will eliminate loadshedding from the country, thus providing a sigh of relief to people.
Moreover, he said that Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) had been directed to avoid unannounced load-shedding in the country and people should show patience to tolerate the unwanted situation because previous government did not generate even a single megawatt power in the last eight years. He further said that the construction of Basha Dam would be started in the next year, which would be tremendously helpful to cope with the power crisis.
In response to a question he said that Ministery of Water and Power was concentrated on Hydropower projects to provide electricity to the masses at cheap rates, adding that government was not financially strong enough to provide subsidy in the head of power that is why the government had to increase power tariff, he maintained.
"Although we could not achieve the power and energy conservation targets, we saved 250MW by advancing clocks one hour forward and National Energy Conservation Policy" he pointed out. He announced to double the Power Generation Allowance for the employees of the Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco). Rs 500,000 would be granted as compensation to the employees, cadre of BPS 1 to 15, who would die during the performance of their duties.
He further announced rupee 1 million and 1.5million compensation to the employees in BS 16 to 19 and 19 to 21 respectively. He said that government was working on Wind Energy projects, coal power projects and solar energy power Projects on the war footing, after the completion of these power projects more than 1500MW power would available to the National Grid he added.