PAKISTAN Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader and former Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi said Monday the government was “sorry” for the ongoing electricity load-shedding in the country and vowed to fix the issue in the coming days.
In a press conference flanked by federal ministers — State Minister for Petroleum Musadik Malik, Minister for Power Khurram Dastgir Khan and Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb — Abbasi said the government needed time to rectify the power shortage as the country was producing 21,000 megawatts and there was a shortfall of 4,000 megawatts.
The shifting goals and targets of the Government on this issue of critical concern to the general public is transmitting and unfortunate message that the authorities concerned are somewhat clueless about the corrective measures needed to get rid of the menace of load-shedding which is assuming alarming dimensions with a rise in temperature and a reduction in overall generation capacity.
The confusion is highlighted by non-implementation of the directives of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who wanted an end to the load-shedding from May 01 and now again has categorically stated that load-shedding beyond two hours a day would not be acceptable.
Abbasi, however, said that the duration of the load-shedding would reduce to the maximum of 3.5 hours with immediate effect and it would come down to 1.5 to 2 hours daily from next month.
The efforts being made by the Government to arrange oil and coal to increase generation and fix problems of non-functional plants are appreciable.
However, the country needs complete elimination of load-shedding and that too on a sustainable basis as the economy cannot grow and prosper without this basic facility.
The Government also needs to inform the people thoroughly how a country surplus in power generation was forced to witness the worst kind of power outage.
Last time, PML(N) worked hard to make the country surplus in energy (both electricity and gas) because of the hard work and proper vigilance by the leadership and there is no reason the mission cannot be accomplished now.
