NEPRA has held corruption and mismanagement in the power sector responsible for the energy crisis and increase in electricity tariff in the country.
Briefing the energy committee during a meeting at the Parliament House on Tuesday, NEPRA officials said inactive and irregular functioning of the majority of the power plants was the main reason in the skyrocketing electricity tariff.
The committee was also informed that despite repeated requests to cease the operation of these plants, the government had not responded positively, and was rather trying to regenerate the faulty plants, instead of operating new ones.
Ministry of Water and Power Additional Secretary Himayatullah Khan informed the committee that current electricity shortfall amounted to 2,031MWs, causing five hours of load shedding.
The committee members expressed strong chagrin over what they termed a wrong statement of the water and power officials, since cities like, Hyderabad, Sukkur, and Sanghar were being subjected to 10 to 12 hours of load shedding daily.
Khan also said the ministry had developed a monitoring system in cooperation with the power distributor companies and held several interactive sessions which remained helpful to reduce system losses.
Khan admitted that there were many leakages in the distribution system. He said “our tariff is not able to complete the generation cost and more power we generate more amount we lose”.
The ministry officials informed the committee that a lack of gas had forced closures of eight power plants, adding that despite the fact that furnace oil produced electricity at Rs 22 per unit, consumers were being charged Rs 8 per unit.
NEPRA member Khawaja Nadeem told the committee that during the last six months Rs 69 billion were paid to purchase oil for power plants and if these plants were run with gas then Rs 138 billion could be saved every year.
Meanwhile, WAPDA officials said they had so far not succeeded in rescuing WAPDA’s eight abducted employees from Gomal Zam dam, adding that the abductors had also killed one of the abducted.
