- Power minister says Rs 3.2 b recovered in campaign against electricity bill defaulters, vows not to provide electricity to defaulters – government being one too!
Terming his government a “big defaulter”, Minister for Water and Power Khawaja Asif jolted the masses out of the dream world saying that he did not want to give any false hope of an immediate end to electricity load shedding.
Khwaja Asif, flanked by Information Minister Pervez Rashid and State Minister for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali, was addressing a press conference in the capital on Friday.
While referring to the recent disconnections of electricity supply to top government buildings including President House, Prime Minister’s Secretariat, Parliament Lodges and official residence of chief justice of Pakistan, and the non-payment of electricity bills, the federal minister for water and power reiterated that the recovery drive will continue and feeders will be shut “by hook or by crook” to disconnect power supply to consumers who were not paying bills.
“Whoever does not pay electricity dues will not get power supply – whether on a federal level, provincial or an individual level.”
The defence minister further said that 2,200 megawatts of electricity will be added to the system in the next two months.
Referring to the hardship that the citizens will face in the next couple of months, Asif added that the people will have to tolerate load shedding as there was a shortfall of electricity.
“Energy crisis is being curbed because of the construction of new power projects such as the one in Guddu,” the minister remarked shedding ‘some’ positive light to the situation the country is currently in.
The minister said that those protesting against load shedding were defaulters and wanted to steal electricity through ‘kundas.’
The minister said Rs 3.2 billion has been recovered during the ongoing campaign against electricity bill defaulters. He said most of this amount has been recovered from public sector departments.
He said free electricity could not be provided and the merchandize would be sold to those who paid for the same, the minister warned. He said serious efforts had been put in place to ensure full recovery from government departments and private sector by June 30, which would improve power situation.
He said thanks to the power supply disconnection move, an amount of Rs 1.5 billion were recovered from Peshawar and the federal government was in touch with all provincial governments to settle disputes on power liabilities against them.
The minister said that there should be a solution to the disputed dues and the federal government should accept if it had to bear a bit of the outstanding as part of settlement arrangements to clear the backlog, he suggested.
He said agriculture was a vital sector and efforts were being made to observe minimum load shedding and added that tube wells head was reflecting Rs 72 billion as outstanding.
Moreover, the minister said that a control room was being set up in the ministry to provide real time information about 8,900 feeders in the country with regard to load shedding, demand and supply gap etc.
He said the power situation would improve when imported gas would start flowing in by the end of 2015 and the domestic and industrial sector will have sufficient power supply. He said the government was making earnest efforts to add more power supply to the system and last year in May, generation stood at 8,200MW and but it had gone up to 10,058MW this year.
The minister said efforts were also being made to clear circular debt but the power sector still faced it with Rs 197 billion, adding that 1,700 MW was added as result of partial clearing of the intercorporate debt. He said Ministry of Finance recently released Rs 20 billion to Pakistan State Oil (PSO) for fuel supply to power plants as a part of efforts to ease load shedding. He said the media should play its role to educate people to regularly pay their bills and added that if any official was found responsible in the malpractice, he would be taken to task.
Nawaz says he will end loadshedding in 3 years. How much did he do in 2 years? And why cant he publish his plan so we can evaluate his performance. This is all hogwash. This Govt. is relying more on foreign funds. Ishaq Dar is a dumb dummy considered most incompetent in IMF. Lets hope this Govt. is shown the door soon else we are surely doomed.
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