ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Muhamamd Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday appreciating the good work by the officials of Ministry of Water and Power reiterated that reliance on costly fuel for power generation will be reduced a great deal by the end of tenure of the present government.
According to a PM House statement, he was chairing a meeting of Cabinet Committee on Energy and reviewed ongoing power projects including clean energy projects, coal fired power plants, hydel and LNG power plants that will add electricity to the national grid during the year 2017 and before March 2018.
The meeting held here at PM House deliberated on the future power generation projects to cater for the ever increasing energy requirements of the country in the wake of increased economic activities, massive infrastructure and industrial development across the length and breadth of the country.
The status of work on establishment of new transmission lines was also discussed at length in addition to streamlining the power distribution system.
The Prime Minister said the country was gripped by the energy crisis when the present government came into power; today the situation has changed significantly.
There is now zero load-shedding for the industrial sector and load-shedding for the urban and rural areas has substantially and gradually been reduced, the Prime Minister added.
Our holistic reforms in the energy sector and efforts for generating additional power through diversifying the energy mix will help in meeting the future energy requirements of the country, the Prime Minister said.
The Prime Minister observed with satisfaction that these endeavours of the present government have earned significant recognition and acknowledgement on a wide scale the world over.
The Prime Minister added that the present government has unprecedented edge to execute power generation projects having capacity more than the power generation initiatives taken during the last twenty years.
The Prime Minister said that the focus of the present government right from the first day was to resolve energy crisis in the country and adding sufficient energy to the national grid.
He said the government was determined to provide cheaper electricity to our people and expressed confidence that load- shedding will be a reference of history.
The Prime Minister said the government will keep on exploring new power generation projects on micro as well as mega level to ensure sustained and uninterrupted electricity for our future generations, a duty that previous government were unable to fulfil.
Earlier, Secretary Water and Power briefed the meeting that circular debt has been capped, recoveries were satisfactory and line losses have been minimized.
The meeting was informed that transmission and distribution lines projects were on track. The bottlenecks were being removed in the distribution system to ensure uninterrupted supply of electricity to the consumers, he added.
