ISLAMABAD:
After large swathes of the country were in the dark for six hours following a massive breakdown at the national power grid on December 12, the ministry of water and power submitted a report on Sunday about the breakdown to the premier leading to the suspension of three top officials at the Guddu power plant.
As per the investigation report of the ministry of water and power, the power outage was due to the negligence and lack of coordination on the part of Guddu power plant management.
“The 220 to 500 KV grid station at Guddu was overloaded and resulted in the tripping of the northern transmission system,” the report stated.
The report resulted in action against Guddu Generation Company chief executive Rukhsar Qureshi, resident engineer Maula Buksh and senior shift engineer Mohammad Momin, who have been suspended from their posts.
The breakdown resulted in power outages in districts of Peshawar, Mardan, Sawabi, Azad Jammu & Kashmir, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Jehlum, Attock, Chakwal, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Lahore and Multan.
Earlier on Friday, a ministry of water and power spokesperson has said that faults reportedly occurred at the Tarbela powerhouse, which affected 500KV transmission lines. The spokesman had stated that the power failures were in between Tarbela and Guddu, whereas southern Punjab and Sindh were not affected at all.
However, according to sources the breakdown was result of excess pressure on the national grid. This winter uninterrupted power supply is under immense pressure as Punjab-based industries are getting considerable share in power supplies.
They said ensuring power supplies were necessary to ward off political backlash.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 15th, 2014.
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