No attention was paid by either public or government on saving electricity, said Federal Minister for Water and Power Khawaja Asif in an interview to a private media outlet.
He said that the focus has been on inauguration of new plants.
“I emphasized on saving electricity but nobody cared. We (ruling party) want public to know regularly that a new plant is being inaugurated”, minister added.
Mr Asif said that loss of electricity is the chief reason behind energy shortages.
“Around 3000MW to 4000MW of electricity would be saved if public uses electricity in a rightful manner instead of squandering it. Unfortunately, no attention is paid to this issue,” asserted Asif.
Expressing confidence, Mr Asif further said that electricity shortages would be uprooted this year. Regardless of the capacity he warned that power cuts would take place in areas where electricity theft is common.
He said that 20-hour long power cuts are for those areas where 90 percent of residents do not pay their electricity bills.
As far as debt recoveries are concerned Mr Asif said that the ministry had collected Rs 27 billion from Sindh. No issues pertained in the case of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
“However, issue of debt recovery exists with Balochistan,” articulated Asif.
Asif apprised that ruling party had paid Rs480 billion in terms of circular debts but it had soared to Rs360 billion once again.
Federal minister labelled ‘unrealistic tariff and lesser subsidy’ reasons behind existing circular debts.