Parliamentarians accuse power utilities for mismanagement in loadshedding

Accusing power utilities for mismanagement in power outages, National Assembly Standing Committee on Water and Power considered the payment of bribe to officials of power generation companies to reduce or increase the duration loadshedding.

Reiterating the government’s decision, Secretary Water and Power Zafar Mehmood said that all domestic consumers will be exempted from power breakdowns during Sehar and Iftar times.

Many lawmakers belonging to treasury as well as opposition benches complained that officials of distribution companies were found in taking bribes for exempting one particular area from power outages at the cost of other areas.

Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) MNA, Advocate Ijaz Virk, said that mismanagement of the power distribution companies had made it difficult for legislators of the ruling party to go to their homes.

The people have started attacking residence of the politicians, leaving their families and children vulnerable, he added.

He observed, “The standing committee should take action against the former and current managers of power companies responsible for the mismanagement. Some senior officials of the power companies were increasing and reducing the timings of loadshedding on the basis of their family connections”.

Pledging to put in place a computerized system of loadshedding, the Secretary Water and Power said that the complaints of so many parliamentarians about widespread nepotism and corruption in distribution of power supply could not be wrong.

He noted, “The biggest challenge for the power ministry was to ensure fair and impartial distribution of electricity shortfall when it was not possible immediately to overcome the crisis entirely”.

Some parliamentarians made a demand for an equal distribution of shortfall among urban and rural areas, including the capital, Islamabad.

However, the secretary rejected the proposal saying that the existing system of giving preferences to large cities had been in place for years.

Replying to a query about elimination of complete shortfall, the secretary said that it will take two more years to bridge the gap between supply and demand of electricity.

Later, the lawmakers made a request to exempt the timing of all five prayers from loadshedding. But the Ministry of Water and Power refused to do so, citing continues requirement of some industries.

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Posted by Faisal Farooq on Jul 21 2012. Filed under Pakistan, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.