Ex-power minister slams govt, says ‘wrong decision making’ lead to load-shedding

Former Minister for Energy Hammad Azhar on Friday hit out at the government for "wrong decision making of the imported government" that has lead to the ongoing electricity outage across the country.

Taking to Twitter, the ex-minister said the government failed to take timely decisions on local gas diversions, adding that: “Pakistan Muslim League- Nawaz (PML-N) LNG contracts defaulted and all its dependence was placed on furnace oil and its stock was also depleted,"

The statement comes after Federal Minister for Power Khurram Dastgir in a press conference blamed fuel shortage and technical faults in the power plants for the country's power issues.

He said that the government is taking steps to ensure the situation improves from next month, as fuel availability improves. "In the coming days we also expect further gas allocations from the government, which would improve the load-shedding situation in the next 10 days,” he said.

The federal minister further said that roughly 2,000-3,000MW of additional power demand has been created in the system in a span of weeks, due to rising temperatures.

Meanwhile, Azhar said that due to Eid holidays, the electricity load of the industry will subside and the government is hoping to end load-shedding on the basis of these holidays. “Such load-shedding never happened in our time,” said Azhar.

Earlier, sources told Business Recorder that as much as 15,473MW electricity remains unavailable to the system due to scheduled outages, forced outages, system congestion, fuel shortage and fewer water releases from reservoirs, which could be the main reason for the massive unscheduled load-shedding across the country.