Over 7750 megawatt of power has been added to the system during the last four years.
This was stated by Minister of State for Power Abid Sher Ali during question hour in the National Assembly on Thursday. He said the electricity generation capacity was continuously increasing and the duration of loadshedding has been reduced from 18 hours in 2013 to about two hours.
He said additional megawatts of power would be added to the national grid by November and December which would help rid the country of power outages. Abid Sher Ali said the process of system upgradation was also underway to reduce the line losses.
The minister told the House that the first turbine of Neelum-Jhelum Hydel Project would be commissioned in March next year while the entire project was going to complete by July next year. Minister of State for Petroleum Jam Kamal told the House that eight new oil and gas discoveries have so far been made in the country this year.
Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab Ahmed told the House that 14000 additional polling stations would be established for the 2018 general elections to facilitate the voters. He said the government has also planned to set up separate polling stations for men and women.
Responding to a point of order in the National Assembly, Minister for State and Frontier Regions Abdul Qadir Baloch said the prime minster would make a policy statement on FATA reforms on his return from the United States.
He said that FATA Reforms package has been prepared after consultation with the relevant stakeholders. He said both the houses of the parliament have also held extensive deliberations on the matter.
The minister said under this package, the tribal areas would be brought into mainstream in a period of five years. He said a decision has also been taken to abolish the FCR. He said Rs 100 billion would also be spent on the development of tribal areas in order to bring them at par with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and other developed areas of the country.
Minister of State for Interior Talal Chaudhry has rejected PTI’s criticism on National Action Plan, saying implementation on the plan, has resulted in significant decline in terrorist incidents in the country. He said responsibility also did rest with the provinces to play their part for implementation of the NAP.
Responding to a calling attention notice, he said that Pakistan was carrying out phased fencing of its border with Afghanistan in order to ensure better management of border. He said similarly posts have been equipped with modern system in order to check the movement of people.