Sindh govt’s first power plant to be inaugurated at Nooriabad today

Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah will jointly inaugurate the first power plant of the Sindh government - with a total capacity of 100 megawatts - at Nooriabad on Wednesday (today).

The electricity to be generated by the this power plant of the Sindh government, established under a joint venture partnership with a private sector company, will be supplied to K-Electric.

The Sindh government has established its own power transmission and dispatch company to supply electricity from the new gas-based power plant to the K-Electric system.

It should be recalled here that this is the same power plant for which the Sindh chief minister, while speaking on floor of the Sindh Assembly, had to give ultimatum against the Sui Southern Gas Company so to avoid further delay in provision of sanctioned supply of natural gas of 20 MMCFD volumes.  

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Sindh Information Minister Syed Nasir Hussain Shah said electricity to be generated by this power plant would be helpful in improving power supply situation for people of Karachi.

The Sindh Information minister said the federal government should extend support to the province to curb load-shedding instead of causing unnecessary obstacles.

He said the people of Sindh had endured the worst power supply situation during the first two days of Ramazan as they had to observe timings of Sehri, Iftar, and Taraveeh without electricity.

He said the people of Sindh had been compelled to launch an agitation against the prolonged power outages and lawmakers belonging to all parliamentary parties in the Sindh Assembly had jointly adopted resolutions against the K-Electric’s poor performance, the Hyderabad Electric Supply Company (Hesco)and the Sukkur Electric Power Company (Sepco).

He said a number of new and upcoming power plants in the province could not be completed as they were not offered favourable tariffs for selling electricity to the national grid, while there had been no similar tariff issuance for power plants being built in Punjab.

Shah said though Nepra (the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority) was supposed to be an independent regulator of the power sector, it was, in fact, working under the aegis of the federal government for regulating electricity affairs of the country.

The minister said the Centre had been unduly meddling into affairs of the provinces while trampling upon their autonomy.

He said the federal government had also subjected people of Sindh to exploitation on account of their due share of water for irrigation needs, adding that Sindh was always denied its due share of irrigation water as link canals were operated on illegal basis in violation of the Water Accord of 1991.

He said the Council of Common Interests was the most relevant constitutional forum to resolve such inter-provincial issues but its meetings were not convened on a regular basis. Resultantly, the Sindh chief minister has to often do correspondence with the federal government to plead the case for due constitutional rights of the province, he added.