Sunday, 19 May 2013
HASSAN ABBAS expressed optimism that the new government would be able to overcome the energy crisis through implementation of transparent policy framework. While talking to <i>Business Recorder</i>, Chairman IEP Lahore Centre Engineer Captain Syed Khalid Sajjad (Retd) has said that electricity shortage is the major reason of the economic downturn but the engineers' community is quite hopeful that newly elected government of PML-N would be able to surmount the energy challenge.
The IEP chairman said since the neighbouring India is producing one-third of its total electricity production through coal, the new government would also have to give some attention to this aspect as Pakistan has one of the largest coal reserves in the world.
Khalid Sajjad demanded that new elected government should announce the construction of Kalabagh dam without any further delay. No country in the world can exist without big storages of water for obtaining water and electricity.
Unfortunately, Pakistan previous governments choose an easy way to solve the energy crisis by switching over from hydel to thermal through IPP'S despite agitation from public and engineers. Khalid said that contracts signed with IPPS were in the favour of IPPS and even if they don't produce electricity they will get money.
Khalid said that PPP government raised the price of all kinds of imported fuel to almost double while due to their policies Pakistani currency was devalued to almost half as compared to dollar in the past. This resulted in the crash of economy, thus making it extremely difficult to purchase the fuel from abroad for running thermal power houses. The existing capacity of the thermal power houses is still higher than the total demand but we don't have enough foreign exchange reserve to purchase the fuel from abroad, thus giving a gif)
Institution of Engineers Pakistan (IEP) expressed optimism that the new government would be able to overcome the energy crisis through implementation of transparent policy framework. While talking to
Business Recorder, Chairman IEP Lahore Centre Engineer Captain Syed Khalid Sajjad (Retd) has said that electricity shortage is the major reason of the economic downturn but the engineers' community is quite hopeful that newly elected government of PML-N would be able to surmount the energy challenge.