LAHORE: The ministry of energy’s power division will charge Rs 4.67 per unit fuel price adjustment (FPA) for the month of July to be payable in the month of September, said sources.
It would be further down to Rs 4.50 once National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) adjudicates upon it in the coming days. Meanwhile, a tax burden of about Re1.00 would also be added to this amount, they added.
According to the sources, the FPA for the month of August, payable along with the bills for the month of October, would also be in the same range. It may be noted that imposition of Rs 9.89per unit FPA plus around Rs 2.00 tax for the month of June, and paid then required to be by the consumers in the month of August, had invited public ire countrywide.
So much so, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif had no option but to appear on state television to announce a relief to the life line consumers in the midst of his official visit to Qatar.
Earlier, the electricity consumers had been charged Rs 7.90 per unit for the month of May to be paid in the month of July.
Well-placed sources have, however, held the ministry of power division responsible for the fiasco which puts the prime minister into an apologetic mode during his foreign trip.
They said the ministry could manage a huge FPA of Rs9.89 for the month of June by spreading it over to the months ahead.
Additionally, the power division could have recommended waiver-off of taxes on the FPA of Rs.9.89 per unit for the ongoing month similar to the governments’ waiver of the land revenue from the agriculturists.
This could have, according to experts, saved the poor electricity consumers from tax burden of Rs.2.20 per unit. Instead, they said, the ministry officials demonstrated a failure of highest proportion, compelling the prime minister to cut a sorry figure in front of the nation.
The sources said the Federal Secretary Power Division Arshad Mahmood Langrial claims that the prime minister used to call him as his ‘third son’ on the one hand and then he has been responsible for letting him down on the other by not managing the division’s affairs prudently.
It appears that the ministry has no sense of how to deal with the situation and eventually preferred to put the government into a difficult situation.
Meanwhile, the sources said the federal government had no option but to use expensive diesel as a fuel to generate electricity due to non-availability of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and insignificant power generation through hydel sources, due to mismanagement again of dams by both Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) and Indus River System Authority (Irsa).
They said both Wapda and Irsa kept avoiding releasing water from dams under the fear of drought during May to early July this year, thus bringing hydel generation to 1000 megawatts on an average, which contributed heavily towards power generation through expensive fuel sources.
Thirdly, they said, the ministry also failed to act upon the required economic dispatch order (EDO), which requires cheap generation to be preferred over expensive one.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022