Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah presiding over a meeting to review village electrification and gasification has directed energy department to expedite the assigned work to gas and electricity distribution companies so that the benefit of government initiative trickle down to the villagers.

The meeting was attended by Minister Energy Imtiaz Shaikh, PSCM Sajid Jamal Abro, Secretary Energy Musadiq Khan, Secretary Finance Hassan Naqvi and other concerned officers.

The meeting was told that the criteria to undertake electrification of villages under ADP has criteria which include the village must have a population of 100 souls or above, the villages having maximum distance of four kilometer from existing 11 Kv High Tension line.

Minister Energy Imtiaz Shaikh told the meeting that an amount of Rs11.2 billion from June 2008 to June 2018 for electrification of 8514 villages was started and out of them 7749 villages have been electrified so far while work on electrification of 765 villages was in progress.

The CM was told that HESCO has completed electrification of 4832 villages and yet to have completed the electrification of 466 villages on which work was in progress. SEPCO had to electrify 2967 villages, out of them it has completed work on 2669 and work on remaining 298 is in progress.

The K-Electric was given the assignment of electrifying 248 villages and it has completed 247 while there was a land dispute on one scheme which was being resolved.

The CM directed Minister Energy Imtiaz Shaikh to have a meeting with power distribution companies and urge them to complete the work on priority basis. "It is surprising that the work on the remaining scheme was going on from the last one year- this must be stepped up so that they could be completed.