President Zardari urges to resolve electricity crisis

As power shortfall hit 8,000 megawatts on Thursday and protests fanned across Punjab, President Asif Ali Zardari directed Minister for Water and Power to take effective measures for elimination of unscheduled loadshedding.

President Zardari convened an emergency meeting on the energy crisis, suggesting the concerned minister to establish a central control room in the Ministry of Water & Power for this purpose.

In order to deal with unabated power outages across the country, it has also decided in the meeting that Term Finance Certificates (TFCs) worth Rs82 billion will be drifted to address the issue of circular debt.

Following getting approval from Economic Coordination Committee (ECC), the TFCs will be floated. The relevant authorities, earlier, were mulling drifting TFCs worth Rs70 billion from the reserves of the Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL).

Authorities expressed hope that the issue of circular debt will be resolved under the proposed TFCs floating formula. In their view, the new proposal will generate Rs450 to 500 billion to clear the circular debt.

The power shortfall is likely to increase in the coming days when temperatures, along with the demand of electricity, will further jump in the peak summer months. As a temporary measure, the government has released Rs7 billion of which Rs4 billion will go to the state-owned PSO, a major provider of furnace oil to Independent Power Producers.

According to an official handout, Water & Power Minister Syed Naveed Qamar briefed the meeting about Thursday’s incident that resulted in massive power failure in different parts of the country.

Petroleum Minister Dr Asim Hussain also briefed the meeting on the supply of furnace oil and gas to power plants. The supply of oil and gas has been ensured, which would stabilize power generation by Friday, he added.

At the start of the meeting the President expressed displeasure over the increasing incidents of unscheduled loadshedding in different parts of the country resulting in great inconvenience for the people.

The president emphasized that there was a great need for coordination at all levels, issuing directives to all federal government functionaries dealing with oil, gas and power to remain in Islamabad for the next week and meet regularly for monitoring the situation as well as to take immediate corrective measures to rectify it.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=22042

Posted by Faisal Farooq on May 11 2012. Filed under Latest News, Pakistan, Society. 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.