Sindh Chief Minister, Syed Murad Ali Shah, has suggested to the federal government that electricity at reduced rates should be supplied to at least one additional shift at factories to ensure greater industrial productivity and increased power consumption in the country.
The Sindh CM put forth this suggestion while interacting with a delegation of journalists from Lahore who came to Karachi after visiting Thar.
He said the power generation capacity of Pakistan stood at 40,000 megawatts while Pakistan’s current electricity need was 30,000 MWs. He said the concerned power consumers in Pakistan had to pay extra charges for this additional 10,000 MWs installed capacity. He said the industries were shutting down due to constant hikes in electricity rates.
The CM suggested to the federal government to direct factories having a single-shift operation of eight hours to double their operational hour. He said the government should subsidize the cost of electricity supplied to this additional shift at the industrial units. He said the reduction in electricity rates would increase power consumption in the country.
Shah told the journalists from Lahore that agreements signed by the government with the Independent Power Producers should be seen in the perspective of industrial development in the country.
He mentioned that the PPP’s Sindh government had emphasised the greater production of renewable electricity in the country some 10 years back. He said that similarly, PPP for the first time highlighted the importance of Thar coal for power production but this option had been ignored by the past government.
The CM informed the delegation that Thar coal was capable of generating cheaper electricity for the entire country. He said that Thar coal was being consumed to generate 3,000 MWs of electricity for the national grid that is directly transmitted to Faisalabad. He said that electricity produced based on Thar coal was not being consumed in Sindh.
He said that Sindh hadn’t been fully consuming natural gas indigenously produced in the province although the constitution recognised the foremost right of the province to use the natural resource where it is extracted.
He said that the federal government was still involved in power production, transmission, and distribution despite that the provinces could perform all these energy sector functions.
He informed the journalists’ delegation that Sindh had become the first province to set up its own transmission and dispatch company in 2014 for laying a transmission line from Nooriabad’s power plant to Karachi. He said that Sindh was going to form the first-ever provincial-level power sector regulator in the country to determine electricity tariff on its own.
Sindh CM suggests power supply at reduced rates to industries to increase electricity consumption
