Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) Managing Director Engineer Munawwar Baseer has said that energy is essential for economic prosperity and both developed and under-developed countries are focusing on enhancing their energy capacities and also working on other forms of energy such as coal, solar and wind energy for power generation.
He said this while addressing a seminar on "Power crisis - the way forward," organised by the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEEEP) here on Wednesday. Baseer said that Pakistan was a country full of natural resources and had 158 billion tonnes reserves of coal and it was time that for the public sector companies to make investment in this sector in the first phase.
In the second phase, he said, the private companies should invest in it because there was a lot of potential of investment in this sector and with the participation of both public and private sectors "we can resolve our energy crisis."
He also stressed upon Pakistani companies to invest in energy sector, and hoped that with the help of the policies of newly elected government, "we would solve our energy problems."
He also stressed the need for harnessing the human resource for attaining the goals, vis-a-vis resolving the energy crisis. The other speakers called for harnessing of coal power by launching private - public partnership with 100 million-dollar equity from the government and picking up of one billion dollars or more from the stock exchange for coal mining and infrastructure construction for optimum utilisation of Sindh coal reserves.
They also suggested that the project of Inter-State Gas Pipeline (IPI) should be implemented with maximum speed without any third country involvement so that the gas could be available by 2010 and purchase of 3,000 MW of electricity from neighbouring countries should be expedited.
They also proposed launching of wind and solar energy projects in Sindh and Balochistan with maximum utilisation of local engineering capability in collaboration with international technology holders and through the creation of special companies by the public sector such as Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) and Pepco. IEEEP President Engr. Riaz Ahsan Baig presented welcome address, while Honorary Secretary General of IEEEP Engr. Saleem Arif made keynote address.
The papers were presented by Engr. Ghulam Rasool, ex-member of Power, Wapda; Engr. N.A. Zuberi, Executive Director, PPIB; Mohsin. M. Syed, Chief Executive Office of Hybrid Techniques (Pvt) Ltd; Engr. Tahir Basharat Cheema, Director General (EM &C) Pepco; Engr. Asghar Ali Randhawa, ex-member, Power, Wapda.