PUNJAB Chief Minister Usman Buzdar has approved a revolutionary plan aimed at establishment of wind-solar plants in far-flung areas as part of the efforts to find off-grid solutions for provision of electricity to these areas.
He chaired a meeting on the subject which also decided to install solar panels for mosques in rural areas and bio-gas plants for livestock farms.
Electricity has become a basic necessity of life but this facility is still not available to far-flung and inaccessible areas where provision of electricity from the national grid requires heavy investment.
Therefore, the off-grid solution is the right approach, especially when solar and wind technologies have improved over the years with bright prospects for provision of reliable electricity to remote villages.
Abundant availability of wind and sunshine in most parts of the country means we can provide this basic facility to the deprived areas with much less investment than needed for supply of grid electricity.
We hope the Chief Minister would take personal interest in the initiative and ensure that the plan is implemented in the shortest possible time as standalone systems should not cost much investment and can be executed quickly.
However, the Government needs to ensure that a separate company consisting of fully trained personnel is there to look after these systems as many initiatives could not deliver for long due to lack of maintenance and upkeep.
Solarization of mosques should also be considered as a priority to facilitate worshippers and students of seminaries.
In 2018, a programme was launched for solarization of 12,000 schools across Punjab but its fate is not fully known despite the fact that it was aimed at improving quality of education and learning environment.
