Sindh can resolve country’s energy crisis: Murad

KARACHI: The Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has said his commitment to generate 1000 MWs renewable energy in the province by the end of his tenure has been realised, as the wind-based power generation has increased to 930 MW and by December this year it would achieve generation of around 1200 MW.

The Sindh Chief Minister was addressing the inauguration ceremony of 50 MW Jhimpir Wind Power Plant, on Wednesday. He said, the root cause of the power crisis stemmed from undefined, defective and unworkable Power Policy, particularly related to the indigenous resources. Out of the three, two projects have been operationalised, he said. “It is a wonderful achievement that would add to the power availability in the country,” he said.

He recalled Shaheed Benazir Bhutto was unduly criticised for her power policy, which was termed "very expensive", whereas the tariff for a single unit of electricity, was 6 to 7 cents. Murad said “people do not realise that the cost of not having electricity is very dangerous. “Just imagine, he said without Shaheed Benazir's power policy, we could not have added, nearly 500 MW of power to the national grid and what our plight would have been without that.”

He said like food security there should be energy security as well. He said the PPP government came across wheat shortage in 2008 but we incentivised the crop, leading to bumper crops and finally to its export now. Similarly, to achieve energy security, we need to incentivise the private sector to invest in power generation.

Shah said after taking over as the chief minister, he requested the prime minister to allow Sindh, additional capacity in the national grid and he would generate 1000 MW from the renewable resources. But it did not happen, he said and added “if the federal government had approved our proposal, we would have generated 2000 MW from the wind energy by June this year.”

However, we will generate 1200 MW by the end of this year, he said. Talking about Thar, Murad said people are criticising Sindh government for investing $1 billion dollar in the development of infrastructure in that area. But with this investment, we will have 50,000 MW from Thar within the next 20 years.

The chief minister said the first plant in Thar is on the track, and we will contribute 660 MW power to the national grid by March 2018. “Subsequently every year we would add 1,000 MW from Tharparkar. Besides, Murad Ali Shah said the tariff is as low as 9.5 cents and the cost of Thar power is fifty percent less than the other sources of energy.

The Sindh chief minister asked why is there so much of reliance on the imported LNG and other imported resources of energy. He said Sindh can solve the entire energy crisis of the country. We have got coal, solar wind and other indigenous resources,” he said and added “we would generate 35,000 MW from Jhimpir Wind Corridor.”

Meanwhile, talking to newsmen at Kakri ground, the Sindh chief minister said a campaign has been launched to detect “Ghost employees” in Karachi's local government agencies, as “everybody knows who stuffed them there and to which party they belong.” Murad Ali Shah was visiting Lyari to attend the third anniversary of Akbar Nagori, brother of MPA of PPP from Lyari Javed Nagori.

Speaking about Bilawal's Liaquatabad public rally, he said the huge public response has deeply frustrated the MQM, who in order to hide their embarrassment have announced a public meeting there,” he said. The chief minister said “we have no objections over political meetings but the MQM understands very well that they have lost the public support.

To another question, the chief minister said the government has installed two reverse osmosis plants in Lyari to overcome the water shortage, and added they have run into some problems which will be shortly addressed, and the shortage will be reduced to some extent. Murad said Lyari was, is and will always be the PPP's stronghold and is the bastion o “true jialas of Shaheed Benazir Bhutto.