Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf took strong exception to the long hours of load shedding in many areas of the country during the last two days despite the fact that the power generation had gone up to around 14000 mw but the people had

been facing the same level of load shedding when gap of demand and supply was very wide.

The Prime Minister observed this during a high level meeting of Energy Committee at the PM House Tuesday which was attended by Minister for Water and Power Ch Ahmed Mukhtar, Minister for Finance Dr. Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Dr. Asim Hussain and Minister for Information & Broadcasting Qamar Zaman Kaira as well as the Secretaries of relevant ministries.

The Prime Minister, accompanied by all the participants, left the meeting and paid a surprise visit, without protocol, to National Power Control Centre (NPCC), Islamabad, to ascertain exact position of powergeneration and its distribution.

During the visit, the Prime Minister directed the Management to removethe flaws in the distribution system and make sure that the people face the minimum of load shedding as they were facing before Ramazan.

The Prime Minister further directed that there should no load shedding during `Iftar and Sehar’ times.

The Prime Minister has also summoned a meeting of All Pakistan Textile Mills Association and the CEOs of DESCOs today (Wednesday) aimed at taking them into confidence regarding implementation of minimum load shedding plan keeping in view the added demand of electricity due to the holy month of Ramazan and the continuous hot and humid weather in the country.

The Prime Minister directed the Minister for Petroleum to ensure uninterrupted and sufficient supply of fuel oil to the power sector.

The supply of available gas should also continue, the Prime Minister

directed.

The Finance Minister said that his Ministry would continue to extend full financial support to the power sector in order to minimize the gap between the demand and supply of electricity in the country.

Source: PPI