The country is once again facing an acute shortage of power. The head of PEPCO said yesterday that the shortage is due to three reasons. Firstly, Wapda has stopped the water from hydro dams, thus reducing the electricity production from water. Secondly, fuel shortage for IPP has stopped the electricity production there. And lastly, he said that due to technical problems (read no money to buy fuel) the two nuclear power plants and KAPCO had to shut down.
To be honest, I don’t have high hopes for an organisation that took three years to figure out that Pakistan does not have an energy production shortage, but we have loadshedding due to inefficient production at IPPs, due to low quality and low volume of fuel being supplied.
I also find the PEPCO chairman’s statement strange because PEPCO and Wapda have increased their annual budget three times in the past three years. And not once have they realised that they have high amounts of payable debt to IPPs or even devised a plan to pay these debts back in time.
Instead, it just shows the incompetence of PEPCO and Wapda that the two organisations started thinking about the circular debt problem only when the issue was highlighted by the media.
Wapda and PEPCO are getting more then 14 rupees per unit every month from their users. How can they not pay Rs 7 per unit to the IPPs? Why do we have to get another loan from ADB to pay back our circular debt? (The consumers would probably have to pay the interest for the ADB loan too).
I would like to request the Army Chief to please step in and help resolve this problem and kick out these incompetent people from these important organisations, because the President and Prime Minister are not interested in resolving the electricity issue for the past almost four years.
SHAHRYAR KHAN BASEER
Peshawar