Amidst sizzling hot weather, people are once again faced with eight to fifteen hours of scheduled and unscheduled load shedding on a daily basis while situation is far worse in rural and far-flung areas.
The prolonged power outages have increased miseries of the people and they are finding it difficult to perform their daily chores especially during Sehri and Iftar times.
The country has a capacity to generate about thirty five thousand megawatts of electricity yet according to Power Division, at present only seventeen thousand megawatt is being generated while demand due to hot weather has increased up to twenty one thousand megawatts.
Citing a reason behind prolonged outages, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif whilst taking the floor in National Assembly a few days back, said several plants could not generate power due to unavailability of gas or expensive oil.
We understand that one reason behind the outages is also soaring circular debt and non-payments to the IPPs.
As the mercury is all set to rise further in next three months, the government must take steps on emergency basis to meet the gap between demand and supply of power.
While power generation from hydel sources will increase in the days to come with increased flow of water to reservoirs due to melting of snow, it is also important to make functional LNG based power plants through timely import of the gas.
A mechanism also needs to be evolved to address longstanding issue of circular debt which poses a serious threat to our energy security.
