By By Adeel Pathan
The minister called upon employees of the Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (HESCO) to bring efficiency in the company and reduce line losses to avoid privatisation of the company.
He said an investment of $4 billion has been made by the private sector in the power sector and the government is working on a war footing basis to meet electricity demand. “We have taken energy crisis as a challenge and hoped that Pakistan would get rid of load-shedding by the year end.”
Speaking at a meeting of employees of WAPDA and HESCO and later talking to reporters, the minister announced a one-month honorarium for the employees of HESCO and other WAPDA institutions in Sindh. He said he is visiting the distribution companies to know about problems being faced by them and check the performance of these companies.
He said there was a shortfall of 3,500 megawatts of electricity last year, which would be brought to an end by December.
The minister said present shortfall of electricity is around 2,200MW and therefore the system is improving and efficiency is being increased to cover the demand of power in the country. He said the government has cleared Rs85 billion dues of the PEPCO out of outstanding dues of Rs185 billion. He said he has made the promise of ending load-shedding by year end on the basis of calculations and power is being generated through thermal, hydro, solar and wind as well as from coal.
The minister said the HESCO is suffering losses that have been increased to 40 per cent. He asked the employees of both WAPDA and HESCO to end the power theft and announced that magistrates and police stations would also be established to curb the menace of power theft and Kunda connections. He said efficient employees would be rewarded while inefficient workers would be removed from jobs. He announced that water wing employees of WAPDA are being made as permanent employees and WAPDA employees in Sindh would also get a house rent facility. He asked the employees to run the company efficiently otherwise it would be privatized.
The meeting was organised by the Pakistan WAPDA Hydro Electric Central Labour Union while the HESCO employees also spoke on the occasion.