PAKISTAN Business Forum (PBF) has lamented that country is facing power outages of as much as 12 hours a day despite having 49,651 megawatts of installed generation capacity. The business group said prolonged outages are disrupting commercial and industrial activity, with exporters facing delays in fulfilling international orders because of unreliable electricity supplies. It also criticised Pakistan’s power generation costs, which it described as among highest in the region.
This is a legitimate grievance of not only business community but also the common man as entire nation is suffering hugely due to rising costs of electricity and unending curse of load-shedding. No doubt, it was due to focus of the PML(N) government that country achieved a surplus in generation capacity, sparking hopes the load-shedding will never re-visit any region of the country yet regrettably no part of the country was getting power on a sustainable basis. Apart from planned load-shedding, there are also long outages caused by poor infrastructure, which has not received proper attention by any government. It is a pity that reforms in power sector have become synonymous with tariff increase and frequent replacement of meters whereas distribution and transmission networks are as unreliable as they were before. There is absolutely no transparency in generation and distribution mechanisms as status quo suits corruption mafia in the system. We support the PBF, which has sought greater transparency over electricity generation, asking government to disclose which power plants are currently operating, their individual output and total number of plants generating electricity, apart from the Mangla and Tarbela hydropower projects. It has also called for improved planning, greater system efficiency and measures to ensure consumers are not left paying for structural weaknesses in power sector. Government should come out with a satisfactory response to these and other related issues as highlighted by the PBF and relevant experts.
