File photo. Aamir Qureshi—AFP
Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) leader Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Monday announced that the government will reduce load-shedding nationwide to three-and-a-half hours from tomorrow (Tuesday).
“We are producing 21,000MW, which means we have a shortfall of 4,000MW,” he said, explaining that this translated into a little over four hours of load-shedding to fill the supply and demand gap. Clarifying the prevailing situation, he said the country’s electricity demand had exceeded 25,000MW during the summer against a generation capacity of 17,000MW left by the ousted Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)-led government.
Since coming into power, he said, the coalition government had worked to expand generation capacity, bringing it to 21,000MW over the past three weeks. Stressing that the government and cabinet were sorry for the current load-shedding, he requested some patience from the public to resolve all existing issues.
Flanked by State Minister for Petroleum Musadik Malik, Power Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan and Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb, he said the government had decided to reduce load-shedding to three-and-a-half hours from Tuesday. To achieve this, he said, additional money had been paid to distribution companies and oil arranged to operate power plants.
For the next phase, he said, coal was being imported and its arrival would further reduce the duration of load-shedding to less than three hours by June 16. “By June 30, it will be less than two hours,” he claimed, adding that he hoped the government would be able to reduce this further in July.
Slamming the former government for “lying” about establishing power plants, he said Pakistan lacked the power generation capacity to meet its electricity demand during the summer. He said the PTI-led government had claimed it had power generation capacity of 30,000MW, but the actual capacity was 27,000MW. He said the previous government had failed to install even a single new power plant and credited the state’s agreements with Qatar for preventing the total collapse of the power generation infrastructure.
However, he stressed, the government was not interested in making excuses and was focused on fixing the issues plaguing the country.
To a question, Abbasi said the government was not charging taxes from people on petroleum products, merely passing on the international prices. He also clarified that electricity was being generated at Rs. 60/unit, but was being provided to consumers at cheaper, subsidized rates.