Finance Minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh has urged newly appointed chairmen of power distribution companies to go against the people involved in power theft irrespective of their political affiliation and influence to reduce the power sector losses posing serious challenge to the budget.
Speaking to the chairmen of newly constituted Board of Directors of eight distribution companies here at Planning Commission on Thursday, Sheikh said that the government was paying huge amount from the budget as subsidies to cover the losses of distribution companies at the cost of investment in the social sector. The minister said that there was a dire need to improve the performance of power sector by bridging gap in collection to minimise their burden on the budget and to enable the government to shift spending to health, education and infrastructure.
He said that the purpose of holding the meeting of newly appointed chairmen of distribution companies was to listen to their experience and how to bring about improvement in regulation issues in consultation with National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra).
The minister said the government was making efforts to bring about improvement in the performance of public sector institutions by inducting good people to manage their affairs and assured full support on behalf of the government to the newly appointed chairmen of distribution companies. The minister said the role of Ministry of Water and Power has now been limited to the policy level by handing over operational governance of power sector to the competent people. He said that the ministry should confine itself to policy making only and must not interfere in the operational management of the power sector and appointments of officials.
Appointment of chairmen, he said, should give confidence to the people of the country that people of integrity and well reputation have been inducted in the power generation without any political consideration. The minister said that eyes of the people were fixed on the energy sector, who wanted reduction in load shedding, elimination of theft and least increase in power tariff.
The appointments of chairman of the distribution companies should send a signal to the people that now the people of credibility have taken charge to run and improve the performance of power sector. "You are now on the driving seat and remove all the obstacles without any political consideration to improve the performance of the power sector," said the minister while assuring them of his full support against the powerful people.