LAHORE, June 3: The government plans to spend Rs1 billion to electrify villages during the next year, Punjab governor Khalid Maqbool said here on Monday.

He was presiding over a meeting attended by Wapda Chairman, Planning and Development Chairman, Board of Revenue senior member, provincial secretaries of Irrigation, finance and local governments in addition to member power, finance and water from Wapda.

The governor said that this amount would be spent through the district governments.

Provision of electricity to rural areas atop government’s priority. Around 2,000 villages were electrified during the last two years and 242 more would get power supply this year, he said.

Appreciating the decision to reduce installation charges, the governor said that all villages within five kilometres of the main transmission lines would be electrified.

On the instructions of the president, he informed the meeting, the provincial government has decided to reduce connection charges of tubewells by 33 per cent. This decision has been taken in view of the continued draught conditions, he added.

Wapda Chairman Zulfiqar Ali Khan informed the meeting that 103 kilometres part of the Chashma Right Bank Canal and its 444km distributaries were being built at the cost of Rs17 million.

The Greater Thal Canal was also being completed fast. The Wapda, he said, would spend Rs4.80 billion on different water projects in the next fiscal year.

The meeting was also informed that around 307 different sites for small dams has been identified in the province and they have a combined generation capacity of 335MW.

Dhok Phattan site in the Attock district has a storage capacity of 58 million acre feet and was being actively looked into.

A site for 7.5maf also exists at Rohtas.