PPP govt responsible for energy crisis: Nawaz

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) President Nawaz Sharif on Monday held the ruling PPP responsible for the energy crisis plaguing the country.
He said this in a statement issued for the “Growth and Sustainable Development Conference” organised by the PML-N. Nawaz was supposed to attend the meeting, however, he did not turn up and copies of his address were distributed to the media.
Nawaz said the PPP, which took over in 2008, resorted to ad-hoc measures to overcome the energy shortage, like installing rental power plants (RPPs), which added fuel to the fire by further increasing the cost of generating electricity.
“Because of large kickbacks, these old rented power plants are generating electricity at well over Rs 20 per Kwh and have only added to the circular debt,” said Nawaz. He said Pakistan was currently facing a serious energy crisis and the nation was suffering long hours of load shedding for the past many years.
“The prolonged load shedding has adversely impacted all sectors of the economy, whether it is industrial or agricultural production, offices or educational institutions, hospitals or homes,” the PML-N leader said.
He said, “Thousands of workers have been laid off in the face of high fuel prices and exports, that are needed desperately to overcome the financial crisis, have been seriously affected. The sad part is that it all could have been avoided with better planning and timely actions.”
“In 1990, we were leading south Asia towards the path of economic modernisation and reform, but unfortunately, Pakistan today is lagging behind India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka,” he added.
He said in 1998, his party had launched Pakistan Vision 2010 Programme with a view to map and build on future development needs to become a knowledge economy through and integrated economic plan.
“By 2010, power generation of electricity was envisaged in an integrated energy plan to be 28,000MW. Unfortunately, this programme was discontinued by Musharraf’s regime and the nation is facing its consequences,” he said.
Nawaz said the Planning Commission had estimated that total investment of at least $4 billion was required to meet the growing energy needs by 2020.
He said unfortunately there was no concrete road map to attract investment of the scale or to restore the hydel-thermal mix from current ration of 30:70 to at least 50:50.
In addition, the untapped potential of renewable resources like wind and solar energy, which were also important for ecological sustainability, need to be fully exploited, he added.
Earlier, PML-N Chairman Raja Zafarul Haq said the country’s industrial sector, particularly the industry in Punjab, has suffered enormous losses due to inadequate supply of gas and electricity.
PML-N leader Ishaq Dar said the PPP’s lack of political will had resulted in failure to resolve the issue.
He said Pakistan had a lot of potential to generate electricity, but needed a visionary leadership.
In his concluding remarks, former finance minister Sartaj Aziz said Pakistan’s energy crisis could be tackled.
“We have lot of potential and many other resources to generate electricity,” he said.
During the conference, former Azad Jammu and Kashmir prime minister Sardar Raja Farooq Haider and PML-N Gilgit-Baltistan leader Hafeezur Rehman demanded the government give them royalty for Mangla Dam and Diamer-Basha Dam, respectively.