Minister for Planning,
Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar on Thursday said the lack of a
proper power transmission and distribution system in Karachi was the reason
behind increased load shedding in the metropolis and promised that the federal
government will improve it in record
time.
Speaking on the floor of
the National Assembly, Umar said the main reason behind a weak distribution and
transmission system was the apathy of previous governments, including those led
by the PPP and the PML-N.
The minister said "the
work they [previous governments] did not do then is being done now".
"The cabinet committee
on energy called emergency meetings and summoned officials from KE, National
Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra), and the National Transmission and
Despatch Company (NTDC). Agreements were made and implementation will be done
in record time."
Umar said the opposition
had termed the K-Electric chairperson as a "mafia", adding that they
were giving the impression that the power utility had been privatised during
the PTI government.
"It was privatised
during the PML-Q government. Then the PPP was in government for five years and
Raja Pervaiz Ashraf was prime minister. [The PPP] should tell us why they let
such a corrupt outfit run the company. Then PML-N came into power. We will ask
Khawaja Asif who was the then energy minister why they did not take action for
five years."
The planning minister said
his government was being told that the PPP could end load shedding within six
months if the power utility was handed over to them.
Referring to the PPP's
government in Zulfiqar Bhutto's era, he recalled how there was no electricity
in Karachi the entire night and they found out in the morning that there had
been a coup and General Zia had taken over. "They have been involved in
load shedding for 35 years," he said.
Explaining what he said was
the reason behind excessive load shedding in Karachi, the minister said
Karachi's power needs kept increasing over time but previous governments did
not take any step to either increase electricity production in Karachi or to
create a system to import it from elsewhere in country.
"Power plants kept
increasing throughout the country but Karachi could not take electricity from
them because the transmission and distribution system to do that was not
created."
Umar claimed that the
energy minister in the previous government (Khawaja Asif), when asked about
load shedding in Karachi had said that the city was "not his
problem".
"The PTI government
says Karachi is ours and Pakistan is not complete without it," Umar said.
Umar was responding to a
call attention notice by PPP members, who had drawn attention of the Minister
for Energy Omar Ayub Khan to "unprecedented and unscheduled" load
shedding in Karachi by KE and the failure of Nepra to take prompt action in
this regard.
PPP's Agha Rafiullah said
that the federal government was supplying furnace oil, gas and even power from
the national grid to KE but the people of Karachi were still suffering.
"The members of the
ruling PTI have been staging protest sit-in outside the KE office. Whose
government is it in the country?" he questioned, and added that "if
any representative of a province in Nepra is not functioning properly, [the government
should] sack him and take action against him."
PPP member of the National
Assembly (MNA) Shamim Ara Panhwar claimed that the PPP could resolve the issue
in six months, if KE was handed over to the party.
Responding to the comments,
the energy minister said that the federal government had "forced KE to
build a proper power distribution system".
"Karachi is our city.
The people there voted for us. PPP can only see the darkness that PTI is
overtaking them in Karachi."
Khan said that 30mm cubic
feet per day (cfd) gas would be given from other cities to Karachi which would
be used to produce 200 megawatt of energy. We are giving 100MW from our
national grid. It was the previous government's responsibility to make a system
so we could give electricity through the national grid but they did not give
attention to it.
Talking about Rafiullah's
comments about PTI's protest outside the KE office, Khan said that they were
"protesting for the people of their constituency who asked them about load
shedding".
PTI
cannot continue blaming previous govt.
Former premier and PPP
stalwart Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, speaking after Umar, said that the PTI government
could not continue blaming previous governments for its own shortcomings.
"When you give
speeches instead of giving a specific answer, you always lay blame on previous
governments."
He added that a newly
formed government could blame its predecessor for a few months after coming
into power but not forever.
Two years have passed.
You are being asked when the solution to the problem will be seen and you say
we will tell you in two years. The opposition's primary work is to ask
questions about your performance. But when we ask you these questions, you get
so offended and angry and forget how to respect. This is very wrong."
Ashraf criticised Umar for
"giving the example from 30-year-old history". He pointed out that
the entire board of KE was under the federal government.
"Nepra and energy
ministry is also under the federal government and have no members from Sindh.
Should they [treasury benches] not answer then?"
