Federal Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources, Dr Asim Hussain, on Saturday acceded to the demand of members of Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) to look into options to hand over the management of KESC to industrialists.
"If our businessmen are not happy with the performance then we should get rid of KESC management," he said while addressing the business community at KCCI. The minister said he will take up the issue of KESC with President Asif Ali Zardari in the next meeting and discuss the concerns of industrialists.
He said the next cabinet meeting will be held at Lahore on Tuesday to discuss electricity problems of people and businessmen of Karachi, besides, other issues and another high level meeting on KESC has been convened in Islamabad on Wednesday. Asim assured the business community that loadshedding will end by Monday. "We have made arrangements to provide furnace oil to KESC through PSO and end the electricity woes in the economic hub of the country," he maintained.
He, however, asked businessmen to prepare a comprehensive plan for KESC taking its legal implications also into account and added that it was not an easy task to achieve the required result in short span of time. "You are Karachi based industrialists and in a better position about the electricity problems, give us a plan and the government will extend all support," he assured the KCCI members.
He said the past regimes gave preferential treatment to the Independent Power Projects (IPPs) and Rental Power Projects (RPPs) but present government takes all corrective measures in this regard. "KESC was singled out and given undue favours by framing policies for power generation," he pointed out.
He said cartels of LPG and LNG were also a matter of concern for the government and stressed the need for setting up LNG terminals at ports to facilitate end consumers by weakening the cartels who constantly resort to hoarding of the LNG. The minister said that the next two years were very crucial as the country would likely to face serious energy crisis and there was the need to opt for alternate solutions.
He said during the last six years, the number of domestic consumers has grown tremendously and automobile sector and households need to be given alternate gas solutions to meet the requirement of export oriented industries which contribute to national exchequer.
Dr Asim said that efforts were under way to exploit the energy resources of Thar coal but it would take 5 to 6 years for development. He said present energy crisis was due to absence of any long-term strategy to meet the future demand of the consumers, which was constantly on rise.
Meanwhile, the chairman of Businessmen Group and former president of KCCI Siraj Kassam Teli said that they would stick to their protest by not paying electricity bills until they receive an assurance from KESC management in writing that there will be no electricity shortage in future. "We are fed up with the approach of KESC management to handle the problem," he said.
In his speech, President KCCI Abrar Ahmed said there exist 16,000 industries in Karachi, which were providing direct and indirect employment to over 7 million people. "The industries will be closed down if the problem persisted and would cause unemployment if urgent relief measures were not taken," he said.
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