Electing Usman Khan Taraki as its Chairman, the National Assembly Special Committee decided on Thursday to start holding regular meetings to finalise recommendations for ending power shortages. Nearly all members stressed that the special committee should not work like ordinary committees that meet only once a month. Stressing that the committee should look into the issue holistically, Saima Akhtar Bharwana proposed that any member of the committee who did not attend two consecutive meetings should be warned, and failure to attend a third time should merit disqualification.
Rana Tanveer Hussain of PML-N said the committee should focus on resolving the problem otherwise it will help the government by diverting the attention of the house.
Shahid Khaqan Abassi of PML-N said the power crisis was a complex maze for which even the government has failed to find a solution during the last three years. However, he said every problem has a solution which can be only found if meetings are held regularly so that focus is retained.
The members gave different suggestions for understanding the basic issues before looking into the problem for solutions. Ayatullah Durrani of PPP proposed that the members should be provided the recommendations of the energy summit to understand the issue and decide on the future line of action. Shahid Khaqan Abassi quipped that the prime minister, while summing up the summit, said if anybody has any solution he should contact him. Farooq Sattar of MQM proposed that the committee should ask for the same briefing that was recently given to the federal cabinet in which all the issues and recommendations were explained.
Farooq Sattar proposed that maximum natural gas should be diverted to the power sector as the price of electricity generated from gas was four times cheaper than power generated from furnace oil. He suggested stopping gas supply to fertiliser sector, as he said urea imports were cheaper than furnace oil imports. He said there was no coherent load management plan available with PEPCO and some heads must roll to improve the system. He also lamented that despite abundant wind power potential the government had not been able to fully exploit the potential.
Acceding that the government has failed to resolve the power crisis, Ayatullah Durrani of PPP said that the problem could be overcome simply by improving the administration, which he termed very weak at present. Shahid Khaqan Abassi said the power crisis was a complex matter, which even the incumbent government was unable to fathom for the last three years and the committee was faced with a Herculean task.
