National Assembly standing committee on water and power was informed on Tuesday that an Iranian delegation would call on Wednesday on the members of the special committee on energy crisis, led by finance minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh (today) to finalise the 1100 MW Iran-Pakistan power import project.
Additional Secretary for water and power, Hamid Ali Khan, on Tuesday told the parliamentary panel that the main agenda of the meeting would be to finalise the terms and conditions for import of 1100 MW electricity from Iran, of which 100 MW would be for Gwadar port, while the remaining 1000 MW would be added to the national grid, curtailing power demand and supply in the country.
Total cost of 1100 MW imported power was estimated at Rs 3,664 million, including Rs 1,730 million local component and Rs 1.934 billion foreign component funds to be sought from international donors. The NA body meeting held here with Ghulam Mustafa Shah in the chair reviewed the performance of Peshawar Electric Supply Company (PESCO) and Quetta Electric Supply Company (QESCO) in the wake of prevalent load shedding in the country.
QESCO officials told the committee that capital loss of Rs 389.92 million was recorded due to sabotage activities during last eight years on the basis of deteriorating law and order situation in Balochistan particularly in 13 districts including Quetta, Sibi, Bolan, Manstung, Musa Khail, Naseerabad, Barkhan, Noshki, Kalat, Kharan, Khuzdar, Harnai and Turbat.
The parliamentary panel was also informed that total receivables of Quetta electric Supply Company (QESCO) in state of electricity bills shot up to Rs 38.402 billion till end of July 2011, while Distribution Company failed to collect the bills of Rs 2.740 billion against consumption of 330.35 million power units.
The officials said that worsening law and order situation in Balochistan is the major factor behind slow recovery of electricity bills and sought provincial government's help by providing Frontier Constabulary to recover receivables from different government departments and domestic consumers. The power distribution company had faced loss of Rs 18.489 billion in 2010-11 as an amount of Rs 12.760 billion was collected against total electricity bills of Rs 31.249 billion, agriculture sector was declared major defaulter with non-payment of Rs 21 billion.
The QESCO officials said that the development work on 220/132 KV line in Dera Murad Jamali is in initial stages as 50 acres of land had been acquired by paying Rs 32.50 million, while construction work of boundary wall was awarded to a local contractor.
The QESCO officials claimed that availability of 2 x 220 KV additional source ie Dadu-Khuzdar and DG Khan-Loralai would be completed by December 2011 and June 2012, respectively and accumulated 730 MW additional electricity would be inducted in provincial grid.
Meanwhile, briefing the committee, officials of Peshawar Electric Supply Company (PESCO) said that the company has been dealing with 2.598 million customers since end of last fiscal year and during the same period, 6.976 billion power units were billed to the customers.
They said that worsening law and order situation along with floods in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was the main reason behind damage in power system and assured the committee of all-out efforts to restore transmission infrastructure. The company claimed that an amount of Rs 43.105 billion was collected against the total billing amount of Rs 52.427 billion in 2010-11, while total power loss of 24.6 percent was recorded.
They said that the company has designed a long-term action plan to reduce the technical losses for which following measures will be taken: transmission of power on higher voltages in primary and secondary grid systems, construction of new 220/132 KV grid station reduce 132 KV transmission line, rehabilitation of grid system and capacitors installation at grid station with cost of Rs 3.5 billion as well as bifurcation of 11KV distribution system and capacitors installation at the cost of Rs 2.5 billion.
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