Federal Minister for Water and Power Syed Naveed Qamar said late Tuesday night the Government had taken a string of requisite steps to significantly cut the power outages by increasing its generation.

Addressing late night press conference, he said as a result of the these measures, the power generation had crossed from 9000 megawatt to 12400 megawatt which would bring stability in the current load shedding.He announced that Government planned to increase the power generation up to 14000 megawatt and the current power outages would be controlled in the next 48 hours.

Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Firdous Ashiq Awan and Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Shaikh were also present at the press conference.
Lashing out at those who were out to exploit the power outages and to bring the people onto the streets, he said, a sitting government in Punjab had also encouraged the protests by the people.

One can criticise the government but there was no justification to close the motorway and indulge in hooliganism which could drift into lawlessness. Some people were trying to gain political mileage out of the situation which was not fair and causing a lot of hardships to the people.

Explaining the different reasons for the current power outages, Qamar said the shortage of fuel supply, tripping of Chashma power plant and some other reasons including hot temperature factored into the current crisis like situation and dropped the power generation.
The Government, he said, had decided to set up a five-member high powered committee, headed by the finance minister, to oversee the  power generation and ensure fuel supply to the electricity producing units.
The collection of electricity bills would be changed and there will be no sacred cows under the new recovery system as the bills would be collected across the board and it would no longer be business as usual, said the minister.
He said private companies would be allowed to set up power plants to  raise electricity generation in the country.
He said the current crisis of electricity shortage had mainly occured due to low supply of fuels.
He said another major reason for the power crisis during the last  four or five days was reduction in hydro generation capacity as the water was  under the control of the provinces.
The third reason was that Chashma Power Plant had to be shut down for  refuelling and due to occurence of tripping.
He said the temperature mainly falls during October but this month has been unusually hot this year. He apologised to the people for any inconvenience caused to them by power outages.