ISLAMABAD: United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Mission Director to Pakistan, Greg Gottlieb, provided the power distribution companies PESCO and IESCO with maintenance vehicles and tools at a ceremony held at Rawal Grid Station.
The event also marked the start of the second stage of Live Line Maintenance training for crews from power distribution companies throughout Pakistan. USAID’s Energy Policy Programme (EPP) is providing the training, tools, and vehicles to enhance the capacity of PESCO and IESCO to work on live power lines.
This initiative is part of the US government’s commitment to support the government of Pakistan in making improvements in the energy sector. With the training and equipment provided, all of Pakistan’s power distribution companies will have necessary resources for crews to perform tests and maintenance on live power lines without shutting them down. This will result in increased energy availability and reliability.
EPP chief Jim Hicks, representatives of the Ministry of Water and Power and the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC), and CEOs of several power distribution companies joined Mission Director Gottlieb at the event. During his address, Gottlieb stated, “Through efforts like this, undertaken in partnership with the Government of Pakistan, USAID is helping to increase the reliability of power transmission. These efforts are part of a broad US government energy sector assistance programme for Pakistan which is increasing access to reliable electricity for approximately 16 million people over a five year period.”
As part of the US government energy sector assistance programme, USAID has funded renovations at Tarbela, Jamshoro, Mangla, Guddu, and Muzzafargarh power plants, aided the completion of Gomal Zam and Satpara dams, and helped to improve power distribution throughout Pakistan. These efforts have already added more than 1,000MW of power to Pakistan’s power system. By the end of 2014, these efforts are expected to add a cumulative total of 1,400MW to Pakistan’s power system.
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