Power woes: Senate panel opposes import of electricity from India

Committee on water and power points to losses at the hands of Chinese and US companies.

ISLAMABAD:

Senate Standing Committee on Water and Power on Tuesday opposed importing electricity from India and asked the government to shun the proposal to such effect.

Committee members argued that the country has always had bitter relations with India and hence there was no guarantee as to the continuation of electricity supply from the country’s eastern neighbour.

The committee also said the government should ask the World Bank to not link its $1.5 billion assistance with the import of electricity from India.

Earlier, the committee was briefed by the officials from the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) about WB’s assistance and its conditions. The NTDC officials said there has not been any formal agreement between the two governments for importing the electricity. They said the commercial companies will be responsible for generating electricity and these companies will provide 300 MW of electricity in 15 months at the cost of $12 million.

The committee pointed out that Chinese and US companies have previously caused billions of losses to the national exchequer, citing technical fault in the system. Committee chairman Zahid Khan lamented that despite incurring such huge loss, the government failed to take any action against these companies.

The panel also noted that a huge quantity of coal extracted from 8,000 acres of land in Jamshoro is sold in the open market, which will also cause a loss of billions to the national exchequer.

The committee further said that the Supreme Court was also not given the actual details of the project. “If the Sindh government did not take initiative to scrap the stay order of Sindh High Court in this regard, the committee will go to the Supreme Court,” said Senator Zahid Khan.

A senior official of ministry of water and power told the committee that Fatah Group, a company extracting coal from the government lands in Jamshoro, sells the fuel to seven private companies.

The panel also summoned the officials from the Sindh Ministry of Mining to the next meeting to brief the committee on the responsibility of the two foreign companies for the failure of the Lakhra Power project and on the fresh contract with a local company.

Senator Shahi Sayed said that the previous government spent its five years just to understand the energy crisis, but failed to add any electricity to the national grid and the incumbent government seems to follow the same policy. He stated that 14,000 MW of electricity could be generated through furnace oil and government should focus on it.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 11^th, 2013.