Pakistan is making efforts to materialise electricity trade with India, Afghanistan and Central Asian States besides setting up power exchange grid station to connect member countries of Saarc.
"Electricity trade with Afghanistan, India, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan is on the cards and establishment of regional grid station at Saarc level is being pursued actively," according to briefing made to the Minister for Water and Power, Liaquat Ali Jatoi, here on Friday at the launching of a training programme costing $2.78 million.
The World Bank was pressing Pakistan to start electricity trade with Central Asian States, but was opposing co-operation with Iran, which is already supplying power to border areas of Balochistan.
An official statement said that the training programme, with the title 'Training and talent forming plan for power sector' has been launched for capacity-building of power sector officials to meet the future challenges, but did not say whether the programme was sponsored by World Bank or Asian Development Bank.
Launching the programme, Jatoi expressed hope that the training would go a long way in strengthening and improving performance of the power sector companies.
"For successful transformation of the electrical power monopoly into professional efficient and modern corporations, the manpower in the power sector organisations needs to be expansively trained," he said.
The Minister said that since Pakistan was making efforts to start electricity trade with other countries there was a strong need for having sound technical base and skilled manpower.
Secretary of the Ministry, Ashfaq Mehmood, said that power sector professionals lacked exposure and training related to best practices in the world. This had created a vast gap in the knowledge and experience base available in the country and the best world practices.
The training programme is a modest beginning to develop the power sector human resource and prepare the power organisations for the emerging power industry challenges, he added.
The programme is thus structured on the long-term MS/M Engineering Degree Programmes, medium term training, study tours/short courses learn about current utilities, talent forming young engineers / internees, and talent scholarship tiers. The long-term training programme is targeted to improve the basic education of young engineers of public sector power companies.
Only the English based training programmes are being proposed to be sponsored for training, and four countries include USA, UK, Canada and Australia, have been recommended by the Ministry for seeking admission for Master level studies.