The government has acknowledged its failure to end electricity outages during Sehr and Iftar, saying 20% to 30% areas are still facing power cuts because of a poor and defective transmission system.
“Pakistan has an old transmission system which was unable to deliver required electricity,” Abid Sher Ali, State Minister of Water and Power, told the National Assembly Standing Committee on Water and Power in a meeting chaired by Mohammad Arshad Khan Leghari.
“Sometimes our demand exceeds 15,000 megawatts, but the transmission infrastructure is unable to cope with this pressure, leading to breakdown of feeders.”
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) had also withdrawn funds approved for upgrading the power transmission system following failure of the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) to utilise the money, he said.
Ali expressed fear that the entire transmission system would collapse if the government tried to avoid power cuts and ensure uninterrupted supply. However, he stressed that different initiatives were being undertaken to improve the transmission and distribution system.
Commenting on foreign financing, Ali said installation of transformers was delayed unnecessarily and even funds, which were approved by the ADB and Jica, were not utilised.
The prime minister has constituted a committee to probe why funds were not spent on upgrading the transmission system and the money went back to the ADB and Jica. It will also submit its report to the parliamentary committee on water and power.
At the beginning of Ramazan, the government pledged that it would not resort to power outages during Sehr, Iftar and Taraveeh timings to facilitate the consumers.
To implement the plan, it asked Pakistan State Oil (PSO) to supply 22,000 tons of furnace oil to power plants every day in a bid to enhance generation. Earlier, PSO was providing 18,000 to 20,000 tons per day.
The government also released Rs40 billion to the power producers and PSO – a major importer of oil – to ease the strain on their finances.
Just before the start of Ramazan, PSO defaulted on payments to international fuel suppliers as it could not retire five letters of credit by the deadline. This pushed up oil premiums, making the suppliers reluctant to provide oil without advance payments.
Subsidised power
Ali alleged that the subsidised electricity being provided to agriculture tube wells in Balochistan was being illegally used in hotels, though farmers were paying the bills. “We have found several cases where subsidised electricity for tube wells was used for commercial purposes.”
He ruled out any further reduction in power tariff for agriculture tube wells, saying instead that they were considering proposals to increase the tariff.
As the government was suffering a loss in electricity production, he said, the privatisation of plants would start from April next year.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 4th, 2014.
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In Ramazan only promise works in Pakistan. No action is seen.
You may have IPPs supplying power and new contracts to build power plants. They may be undergoing reconstruction and refitting to coal technology. The frightening fact is that your policy for power production and purchase needs to be re-visited, transmission lines rebuilt, and internal security beefed up. Really beefed up with the courts working overtime to secure the internal workings of the country. Short term cough ups of collateral debt is a transient factor and will not diminish. These politicians are worse than sewerage and migraine molded together. Salams
why even the media is not able to understand that unless and until people do not pay their dues, they cannot get electricity...this means loadshedding..
Honourable Minister Mr. Abid Sher Ali is a fool, the "hotels" which are using the so called subsidized electricity are nothing more then a couple of rooms made of clay and are road side hotels and charging them electricity on commercial rates is merely impossible, as they are hardly commercial in that sense, ideally a hotel or road side restaurant shall be operating under a civic department but is it possible in Pakistan? Mr. Abid Sher Ali is always bothered by the fact that Balochistan gets the bulk of subsidized electricity, but he forgets to mention that Balochistan generates over 3000 MW electricity and its share from the national grid a miserly 700 MW.
The point is how come you did not know this when you promised the public about load shedding during Ramzan or did you make this statement without making efforts to find the facts. Either way it does not speak highly of your Ministry.