ISLAMABAD: In a major achievement, the government on Sunday declared 62 percent power feeders as loadshedding-free all over the country and claimed that it had fulfilled Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari said it was an honor for the government to have fulfilled its promise made with the nation in 2013 to free the country of loadshedding.
“It was the vision of Muhammad Nawaz Sharif and excellent role of the Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and officials of my ministry and other departments that made this achievement possible.” He said 8,600 power feeders all over the country faced no loadshedding except for 326.
“From now on, 5,297 feeders will be facing no power outages and 15 million meters countrywide will face no loadshedding. There will be no urban-rural disparity and henceforth all feeders within the parameters will be equally treated,” the minister said. He said these 62 pc feeders were those making losses of less than 10pc.
“The feeders facing over 10 percent losses will still face loadshedding, as the government can’t bear these whopping losses; however, the number of hours [without power] have been reduced on those feeders. This is being done to control the losses, otherwise, the country has ample generation capacity and ability to feed the remaining feeders without any interruption.
"Due to power theft, nonpayment of electricity bills and other issues there, the government cannot do so, as the country will then face the issue of increasing circular debt,” Leghari said. He further said the federal government was sparing no effort to control the losses and was asking the provincial governments to cooperate with it to control losses. Leghari said the feeders making losses of 10 to 30 pc were earlier facing power outages of four to six hours but now these were facing only two-hour loadshedding.
He said the feeders with over 80pc losses will face 16 to 20 hours of loadshedding. In other slabs too, powerless hours have been sizeably reduced, he added. Comparing December 2013 power position with the current situation, the minister said power generation in Dec 2013 was 9,279MWs against 11,800MWs demand, with a shortfall of 2,520MWs, causing 8-10 hours power outages even in December.
“This year [2017] in December power availability has been increased to 16,477MWs by adding 7,656 MWs to the system, while the current demand is 14,017 MWs, so now we have 2,727MWs surplus. We have moved from shortfall to surplus and also able to meet the growing demand of 2,218MWs during December 2017.
"Pakistan has been struggling for almost four-and-a-half-years to meet the energy demand and has successfully overcome this challenge, as we now have 2,700MWs surplus electricity besides meeting the demand,” he said.
“We are however constrained by the losses due to multiple factors including power theft, non-payment of bills and administrative issues at the DISCOs level, due to which we have to end loadshedding on feeders where losses are less than 10pc.”
The number of loadshedding-free feeders in Lahore has been increased to 1,227 from the earlier 58 feeders, in Gujranwala the number has been increased to 748 from earlier 12 feeders, in Faisalabad the number has been increased from 20 to 896 feeders and in Multan it has been increased from 54 to 763 feeders.
In Hyderabad, 204 feeders have been declared loadshedding-free, whereas earlier there were only 10 feeders facing zero outages. In Sukkur, 24 feeders have been declared free of power outage from 29 earlier.
In Peshawar, loadshedding-free feeders have been increased to 309 from the earlier 60 feeders. In Quetta, the number has been increased to 61 from only 12 earlier. In Islamabad, 710 feeders have been declared loadshedding-free while earlier there was no loadshedding on 72 feeders.
These feeders would be thoroughly monitored and action taken in case of power outage of more than 10 minutes, he said. The minister further said various power projects of 4,000MWs capacity will start generation before 2018 summer.
“In summer 2017, generation had reached the record level of 20,000MWs against demand of 24,000MWs. We are Insha’Allah on track to produce more than 25,000MWs in 2018 with the completion of all projects,” Leghari said.
He said in the next two to three months, the nation will experience a major positive change, as DISCOs and other departments had been tasked with improving their service deliveries. He made an appeal to the nation saying, “Please cooperate with us, pay your bills on time, identify those involved in power theft, install meters and also report to us if any of DISCOs staff is involved in such activities so that we may deliver the electricity on your doorstep without interruption.”
He said the government wanted to facilitate the people showing responsibility and could not equally treat the feeders with less or low power theft with those having huge power theft. He said a legislation was being made to overcome the issue of overbilling.
“After the passage of this law by the Senate, the persons involved in overbilling would be punished in accordance with the law.” He said there had also been a law to check the power theft; however, there were problems in its implementation.