The energy conservation plan approved by the Federal Cabinet on Wednesday envisages a five-day workweek, staggered holidays for industry, early closure of commercial markets. All these measures are aimed at saving 1000 MW electricity to help reduced power crisis in the country.
After the Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, Minister for Finance Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, Minister for Water and Power, Syed Naveed Qamar and Dr Asim Hussain, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources briefed the media about the decisions taken by the Cabinet to bridge 4500 MW electricity gap caused primarily by higher consumption and less generation during the last few years, resulting in massive loadshedding across the country.
The Federal Cabinet approved two weekly holidays for energy conservation and notification to this effect, according to the Minister for Water and Power, would be issued by the Interior Ministry while some branches of banks would be exempted from the decision to facilitate the consumers. However, the Ministers failed to offer a clear and plausible answer to a question about the implementation date of the decision on two weekly holidays. According to them, a decision for early shutdown of commercial markets will be taken by the provincial governments as well as for switching lights, billboards and neon signs to low electricity-consuming bulbs.
Finance Minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh said that energy crisis had been affecting the social life, production and economic growth as well as the budget in the form of subsides. He revealed that GDP could be raised by 2 percent through narrowing or overcoming the energy crisis by solving governance, tariff, recovery and collection problems.
The Minister said the committee on energy was constituted by the Prime Minister with a mandate to work out a plan in consultation with all the stakeholders for solution of the problem and a detailed presentation was made to the federal Cabinet with identification of three to four areas along with proposals to bring about improvement.
Hafeez Sheikh said that the first critical area identified by the committee on energy was adoption of measures to improve the governance problem in the generation and distribution companies by inducting people in their boards as well in the management from the private sector.
The next step proposed by the Committee was to bring about a uniform tariff system for all the distribution companies by doing away with different tariffs for different distribution companies as well as an improved bill collection system for the recovery of Rs 300 billion by involving private sector.
The Minister said that decisions had been taken to bring in people from private sector in the boards of distribution and generation companies and in the next step management of distribution companies from the private sector would be inducted by ensuring that entire process was completed in the next few days.
Hafeez Sheikh claimed that the government has indicated that taxpayers'' money would not be given to the public sector organisations as long as management of these entities was not improved. The Minister said the Federal Cabinet had also given a go-ahead to the distribution companies to disconnect electricity of defaulters even if the defaulters happened to be the offices of President, Prime Minister or Chief of Army Staff.
Minister for Water and Power Syed Naveed Qamar said that a regulatory mechanism of Nepra would be strengthened and efforts would be made to increase investment in power sector in the form of public private partnership. He said that a fast-track installation of new power stations would be carried out within the next 18 months to add 5000 MW electricity to the system.
The Minister said that 1000 MW will be added through O&M while another 1000 MW would be saved through energy efficiency. He said that 1497 MW would be the new addition through thermal power generation while 1000 MW would be through wind energy.
Naveed Qamar said recent measures taken to address the power crisis were short-term or temporary and some structural and conservative measures had been approved by the Cabinet on the proposals of committee on energy sector for long term solution to the problems of circular debt and governance issues. He said that Pepco would be dissolved in the next few days and after that distribution companies would purchase power in accordance with to their needs. The Minister said that professional management planned in the power distribution and generation companies would be given performance contracts with specific targets.
He said that the Prime Minister also directed all Ministries, Divisions and Departments of the federal government to pay their electricity dues immediately otherwise their power connections would be disconnected indiscriminately. The Minister said that the process of recovery of dues would also be replicated in the provinces. Security deposit for new connections and defaulters had been doubled but life-line consumers using up to 100 units would be exempted.
Naveed Qamar said that efforts would be made to complete the recovery process against running and aged defaulters within six months and private sector would be involved in billing and metering services. The Minister said that Federal Cabinet also took some decisions to address the anomalies and directed the energy committee to hold discussions with Balochistan and, AJK governments to resolve issues of recovery and subsidy in their areas.
He said that the government was giving subsidy to tube-wells in Balochistan but half of the tubes-wells were running without electricity meters and the committee would hold meetings with the Chief Minister and Governor Balochistan for installation of meters on all the tube-wells. The committee would also strive to resolve the issue of dues. In reply to a question, Minister for Finance said the government had also decided to privatise Iesco and Fesco through Privatisation Commission.