Two weekly holidays to continue till Oct 31


Zia Khan July 27, 2010

ISLAMABAD: In a bid to bridge the energy supply-demand gap, the government has decided to extend two weekly holidays for public offices by another three months and formed a ministerial committee to resolve the circular debt issue. The decision to this effect was taken at an inter-provincial ministerial meeting held in the federal capital on Tuesday. The meeting was convened by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to review the energy situation in the country. Participants decided to continue all the steps aimed at conserving energy, including two weekly holidays, till Oct 31 this year.

At an energy summit in April, the government had announced a wide-ranging strategy, including several measures, aimed at conserving and generating more electricity to minimise a widening gap between demand and supply.

The measures included two weekly holidays for public offices, closure of commercial centres and markets at sunset and repayment of circular debt amounting to Rs116 billion.

The summit also envisaged a staggered weekly day-off for industrial units to divert gas for power generation.

Tuesday’s meeting decided to continue with all these measures despite slight opposition from the Punjab government to closing of businesses at 20:00 hours.

The meeting decided that the ministerial committee – comprising ministers of finance, water and power and petroleum – would hold meetings with the four provincial chief ministers to resolve the issue of areas (on account of circular debt).

Premier Gilani directed the authorities to avoid power cuts at Sehar and Iftar times during the holy month of Ramazan set to begin sometime next month. The premier said that power shortage is a collective responsibility of the federal and provincial governments and they all must resolve it.

Since the April summit the total electricity shortfall has reduced to 3,000 megawatts (MW) from 5,000MW.

In his concluding remarks, the prime minister appreciated the role of provincial governments in the implementation of power conservation measures.

Earlier, Gilani held a separate meeting with the chief ministers and urged them to focus on effective utilisation of available energy resources.

He said the conservation measures agreed upon at the last summit had helped in saving 1,500MW of electricity per day.

Unlike the previous year, this summer the industry was provided uninterrupted power supply and in the same way tubewells were provided 10 hours of uninterrupted power supply in rural areas.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 28th, 2010.

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