Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has tasked the energy department with proposing power generation projects in 10 days, not realizing that the department has failed to come up with a single scheme in the past one year, leaving the Rs 6 billion earmarked for energy untouched, Pakistan Today has learnt.
Sources privy to the development revealed that the bureaucrats had been keeping the CM in the dark about actual facts and progress.
The Punjab government, on its part, allocated Rs 6 billion for then newly-created energy department. However, the Finance Department has not released even a singe rupee to the department. A Finance Department official said the department released finances only after getting request from a department concerned, while in this case “we did not get any request or proposal to release funds”.
Similarly, sources in the Punjab Civil Secretariat maintained that not even a single scheme had been proposed by the energy department, which had the mandate and the financial pool available with it. “Only Rs 100 million have been requisitioned by the department and that too as counterpart funding in a project being co-financed by the Asian Development Bank…besides the ADB project started before the establishment of energy department and envisages 24MW of electricity by setting up hydel power stations at Marala, Chianwali, Deg Outfall, Okara and Pakpattan, however, the energy department has no role in it,” an official said, seeking anonymity. He said the energy shortfall of the province was around 8,000MW and the province had no capacity to generate electricity.
The sources further said the top officials in the energy department had been involved in “wikipedia scholarship” by gathering facts from the internet to brief the chief minister, who had suddenly started taking interest in energy after the media highlighted Punjab’s energy generation contribution. They maintained that the bureaucrats who could not come up with a single scheme in one entire year could hardly propose a scheme in 10 days. “There are serious technical issues involved in power generation which cannot not be solved in two weeks…feasibility studies are conducted before actually implementing any project…the officials are only going to misguide the CM,” they added.
The sources added that the Punjab government was expected to allocate Rs 12 billion for energy generation in the upcoming budget, which was going to “meet the same fate”. Energy Department Secretary Jehanzaib Khan, however, said the department had formulated schemes but did not propose it because the financial year was ending and they would have to surrender the money soon after getting it released.