No dearth of electricity, smog causing loadshedding: minister

Islamabad :Federal Minister for Power Division Sardar Awais Ahmed Leghari Tuesday said current loadshedding is not because of non-availability of electricity as it is on account of host of technical reasons including the concentration of smog in Punjab causing tripping of the transmission lines.

Talking to The News, Awais Leghari said that areas in Mepco, Lesco and Hesco region are facing unique smog for the first time. “We have electricity in abundance, but outages are happening in the wake smog,” he said.

However, he admitted that the NTDC and Discos have not been able to resolve the issue. He said he has ordered the NTDC team to leave for China for studying the Beijing model to cope with the smog issue. “I want the NTDC and Discos to resolve this problem as per the best practices available in the world,” Leghari said.

Beijing is also hit by smog but power outages did not occur there. The minister said that he is not concerned anymore about the next demand peak season of summer as there will be ample electricity available with Pakistan and there will be no loadshedding at all. “So far, we have injected in the system close to 10,000MW of electricity,” he said.

To a question, the minister said Discos need a lot to improve their performance. He said Discos need to introduce corporate culture, otherwise they will not survive. He said Pakistan is now going towards to open power market regime and the electricity units will be traded in the stock exchange and to this effect bilateral agreements are being made between the companies in power sector. Leghari said there will be no more monopoly of Discos in near future when Pakistan’s power sector advances towards to open market regime.