President Asif Ali Zardari on Saturday directed the Water and Power Ministry to step up power plants for overcoming the severe power crisis being confronted by the country. He said this while chairing an emergency meeting on power situation held here at the Presidency.
Zardari said there was no alternative to reduce the pass-through cost of electricity and asked the Ministry to consider whether it can be done through commodity trading enabling the government to book oil cost in the international market on the long-term basis. Earlier, Water and Power Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf gave a detailed presentation on the availability of power, the specter of load shedding and the prevalent tariff.
The minister said a special committee had already been constituted to review the increased power tariff, which decided to provide interim relief to the consumers and a sub committee had been set up to review the tariff structure. Pervaiz Ashraf said there was a power deficit of over 4700 mega watt (MW) in the country which led to resorting to hours long load shedding.
The minister also outlined the steps already taken to end load shedding by the end of next year. According to the plan, rental power plants at Faisalabad, Guddu, Sialkot, Multan and Quetta will generate 1000MW. It also include setting up of another four power plants run on LPG with a total capacity of 900 MW and the projects will be set up on fast track basis. Over 1200MW of power will be generated by IPPs and another 72 MW from hydro sources, the minister said.
Comments
Comments are closed.