Energy Conference another Cosmetic Exercise: PTI

PTI leader and former minister Malik Abdul Qayyum said on Wednesday that recent energy conference was still another cosmetic exercise.
At the end of second National Energy Summit, PM Gilani had promised equity in the electricity outages across the country, in response of which, KESC said, “We don’t agree with the proposal of uniformity and power outages, especially in Karachi. We are a private company and have invested a billion dollar over three years to augment our generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure; we cannot be ‘penalised’ for doing that on the basis of equality.”
The PTI leader said there was no mention of the monstrous circular debt which had to be sorted out for ensuring the smooth supply of furnace oil to thermal power plants which generate 77 percent of electricity requirements of the country.
He added that the issue of transmission and distribution losses was not thrashed out at the energy conference.
He recalled that in the last four years, the prime minister had held at least fifteen strategic or roundtable dialogues, energy conferences with the World Bank, FODP, USAID, ADB as well as provincial chief ministers, finance minister, federal secretaries and the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission.
What really transpired at these conferences—why were no solutions agreed upon—what contingency plans were outlined—why has donor agencies stated objectives of “ rapidly closing the supply-demand gap only been a cosmetic exercise” was still not known, he said adding that let us treat this energy conference another cosmetic exercise.
He said further that the people, business and industry could either brace themselves for more shortages, outages and shutdowns or they could support Imran Khan to get the country out of crisis.