TUESDAY JANUARY 10: Dealing with power sector inefficiencies: all nine discos sign agreement with USAID

ISLAMABAD: The government and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on Monday signed an agreement to deal with the inefficiencies through reforms in power sector. The agreement was signed by Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of government-owned power distribution companies (discos) and John Morgan, Director of USAID.
Imtiaz Qazi, Secretary, Ministry of Water and Power was also present on the occasion. According to the deal, the US agency will spend $60 million on different projects meant for enhancement in energy production, repair of lines, recovery of bills, customer service, management and workers' training. All the nine government-owned power distribution companies (discos) signed agreements with the US government to collaborate for improving energy supply to the domestic and industrial consumers. Under the agreement, the United States will help the discos generate more revenue to pay for energy production, reduce losses in power distribution from producers to consumers, and make the power supply more reliable.
The three-year USAID funded Power Distribution Program is aimed at working jointly with government-owned electric power distribution companies (discos) to improve their performance in terms of reduction in losses, and improvement in revenue generation and customer services, to bring them at par with well-run utilities in other developed countries. Through this program, the United States Government provides assistance and support to the Government of Pakistan (GOP) in its efforts to reform the power sector to end the current energy crisis.
"Every customer wants reliable and sufficient power supply. By improving the collection of energy bills, discos will have more money to pay for power generation, thus reducing load shedding in the country. Similarly, reduced losses will be translated into more reliable power supply and fewer unscheduled outages," said John Morgan, Director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Energy Office at the signing ceremony.
Under the agreements, a USAID $60 million Power Distribution Program will train thousands of disco specialists in improving the maintenance of the distribution lines, collection of bills, customer services, management, and other disco operations. USAID will also help discos modernise equipment with expert consultations, and introduce various international best practices to ensure more reliable power supply to consumers. This assistance is yet another example of the long-term US commitment to support Pakistan's key priorities.
The USAID Power Distribution Program has been divided into following two components: (I) Operational Audits of each of the nine Government-owned discos. The purpose of these operational audits is to establish baseline information that can be used to measure improvement in performance over time. The audits will cover governance, commercial aspects, engineering and operations, financial, human resource, communications, and customer service. Opportunities for fundamental improvement surfaced in all areas. These improvement opportunities are reflected in discos-specific Performance Improvement Action Plans.
(II) The program focuses on execution of the Performance Improvement Action Plans in collaboration with each disco and the Ministry of Water and Power (MWP), aimed at improved: 1) sustainability, 2) governance improvement, 3) revenue improvement, 4) loss reduction, and 5) capacity building and training -including implementation of interventions to demonstrate a number of key operational improvements and directly measure their value to the utility.
These include: management training in strategic planning and change management, engineering planning and standards, personnel systems training, customer information system training, lineman safety, business plan and financial modelling, communications and customer outreach, and methods of developing and training personnel. In addition to improved energy distribution, USAID is also helping the government to restore and increase its energy production capacity, and to introduce long-term energy sector reforms.