THE Federal Cabinet, which met in Islamabad on Monday with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in the chair, renewed its commitment to address the challenge of load-shedding satisfactorily and comprehensively through a combination of measures.
The Prime Minister once again gave directions for reduction of the power outages to just two hours daily, adding the Government would win hearts of millions of people if it accomplishes the difficult task of overcoming the menace of load-shedding in the country.
The decisions that the cabinet took on the issue of power shortages is an indication that the Government was on the right track to address the issue.
As electricity charges are on the rise, the Prime Minister has done well by issuing directions to the authorities concerned to prepare a plan for installing only those power generation plants in future which do not need imported fuel.
Previous instructions of the Prime Minister for reduction of load-shedding to just two hours could not be implemented and practically the outages have increased during the last few weeks but the situation is likely to improve in the next few days as inflow of water in Tarbela has increased brightening prospects for generation of maximum 3,500 MW of electricity besides addition of 1,100 MW from K-2 power plant.
Efforts are also being made to improve management of distribution companies and the Prime Minister has called for a plan to hand over discos to provincial governments which are in a better position to run them.
The plan to replace free electricity to WAPDA employees with salary incentives would also help curb misuse of the facility.
The much-talked-about plan to shift tube-wells to solar energy also needs to be implemented on a priority basis to conserve energy.
