ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has said that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)-led federal government is determined to provide cheaper electricity to our people, and expressed hope that load-shedding will be a reference of history.
“We are on track in our endeavours; InshaAllah, load-shedding will be a reference of history,” Sharif said while Charing a meeting of the Federal Cabinet Committee on Energy in Islamabad on Tuesday.
The meeting reviewed all ongoing power projects in terms of timelines including clean energy projects, coal fired power plants hydel and liquefied natural gas (LNG) power plants that will add significant electricity to the national grid during the year 2017 and before March 2018.
Besides, the meeting also deliberated on the future power generation projects to cater for the ever increasing energy requirements of the country in the wake of increased economic activities, massive infrastructure and industrial development across the length and breadth of the country. The status of work on establishment of new transmission lines was also discussed at length in addition to streamlining the power distribution system.
The meeting was informed that bottlenecks are being removed in the distribution system to ensure uninterrupted supply of electricity to the consumers.
In his remarks on the occasion, the prime minister said that the focus of the present government right from the first day was to resolve energy crisis in the country and adding sufficient energy to the national grid.
“We will keep on exploring new power generation projects on micro as well as mega level to ensure sustained and uninterrupted electricity for our future generations, a duty that previous government were unable to fulfil,” he said.
The prime minister appreciated the good work done by the officials of Ministry of Water and Power and said that by the end of tenure of the present government, reliance on costly fuel for power generation will be reduced a great deal.
Nawaz Sharif said that the country was gripped by the energy crisis when the present government came into power; today the situation has changed significantly.
The prime minister said that there is now zero load-shedding for the industrial sector and load-shedding for the urban and rural areas has substantially and gradually been reduced.
“Our holistic reforms in the energy sector and efforts for generating additional power through diversifying the energy mix will help in meeting the future energy requirements of the country,” Nawaz Sharif said adding that these endeavours of the present government have earned significant recognition and acknowledgement on a wide scale the world over.
The prime minister said that the present government has unprecedented edge to execute power generation projects having capacity more than the power generation initiatives taken during the last 20 years.
The Secretary Water and Power briefed the meeting that circular debt has been caped; Recoveries are satisfactory and line losses have been minimized. The meeting was informed that transmission and distribution lines projects are on track.
