AS the mercury is constantly on the rise, the people are once again faced with the problem of power outage.
Especially in the rural areas, the load shedding is being carried out for prolonged hours and there is nobody to listen to their complaints.
Several students fainted at a school in the Malpur area of the federal capital on Wednesday due to the power outage in the intense heat.
And indeed there would be more such incidents if the uninterrupted power supply was not ensured to the people in the summer season.
The very outage this time has once again reminded the people the 2008-2013 era of PPP government when the country was faced with the worst power crisis due to serious gap in demand and supply.
Over the last few years, however, the people were consistently being told that the country is producing electricity more than its demand.
The people wonder now where that electricity has gone? Despite the fact that the country has the capacity to generate electricity up to twenty nine thousand megawatts, the electricity shortfall has swelled to 6,500 megawatts.
We understand it is mainly because of less supply of RLNG to power houses besides the maintenance work at the turbines of Tarbela Dam has further worsened the problem
. Minister for Energy Hammad Azhar must take immediate notice of the situation and do the needful at the earliest to overcome the shortfall. The power houses must immediately be provided with the RLNG they are required.
The outage is not only badly affecting the common man amidst the sweltering heat but will also adversely impact the production capacity of the industries.
There is a need to bring major reforms in the power sector to address its long standing issues especially that of circular debt which reportedly stood at Rs 2.37 trillion in the month of March.
There is a dire need to improve the transmission and distribution system besides checking the pilferage in the system to reduce the line losses.
Efforts should be accelerated to enhance the share of renewable energy in order to provide cheap electricity to the people.
