ISLAMABAD: Muhammad Naveed Malik, Acting President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry has called upon the government to take urgent measures to overcome the rising power load-shedding as sudden increase in the load-shedding of electricity was badly affecting production activities and making the life of the common man miserable, especially in this holy month of Ramazan. He lauded the directions of Prime Minister to power ministry for taking steps to curtail the power sector losses in order to improve overall system efficiency and power supply. He said this while talking to Karim Aziz Malik, Vice President, FPCCI Capital Office, Islamabad who called on him at Chamber House.
Muhammad Naveed Malik said that as per Economic Survey 2017-18, the installed capacity of electricity in the country has improved from 22812MW in June 2013 to 29573MW by February 2018 while the outgoing government had claimed addition of over 10,000MW of electricity to the national grid during its tenure. However, he said despite these positive developments on energy front, the rising power load-shedding was beyond understanding.
Muhammad Naveed Malik said that uninterrupted power supply was the key requirement for industrial activities to flourish, but the rising phenomenon of load-shedding was causing harmful consequences for the manufacturing activities that could give rise to more unemployment as well. He said the frequent load-shedding of electricity would also discourage new investment as no one would be ready to invest in Pakistan without availability of consistent power supply. He urged that government should utilize all means and resources to overcome the power crisis so that trade and industrial activities could grow smoothly.
Speaking at the occasion, Karim Aziz Malik, Vice President, FPCCI Capital Office said that the transmission and distribution (T&D) losses in Pakistan were around Rs.120 billion in 2013 that have increased to Rs.360 billion by 2018. It showed that no concrete measures were taken to reduce T&D losses. He said to put the country on the path of sustainable economic growth, overcoming power load-shedding was essential and urged that the government should accord high priority to reduce power crisis in the largest interest of the economy and the general public.
