June 14, 2006	Wednesday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 17, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, June 13: The Water and Power Development Authority on Tuesday came under scathing criticism from opposition and treasury lawmakers in Senate for failing to provide uninterrupted electricity supply to people, reduce line losses, check inflated bills and control corruption in its offices.

It was a private members day and the house was to dispose of a 34-item agenda, including some important legislative business, but most of the time was consumed in discussion on Wapda, gastroenteritis and the HEC.

The lawmakers from both treasury and opposition demanded greater provincial autonomy and handing over of Wapda to the provinces. They also demanded shifting of Wapda headquarters to the federal capital.

Admitting some ‘in-built’ weaknesses of the authority, Minister for Water and Power Liaquat Jatoi said the government was determined to streamline the system by pumping in Rs38 billion this year. He said the government had spent Rs32 billion in the outgoing fiscal year on revamping the outdated transmission system.

Most of power breakdowns in Balochistan, he said, were because of blowing up of transmission lines on which the government had to spend Rs600 to Rs700 million.

He claimed that Wapda had increased to 75 per cent electricity supply to Karachi from 25 per cent being supplied before privatisation of the KESC. He said the ECC had approved Rs1.3 billion subsidy to offset the company’s burden.

Earlier, the house sent a calling attention notice to its standing committee on education and summoned Higher Education Commission chairman Dr Ataur Rehman to explain withdrawal of powers of appointment of vice-chancellors of public sector universities from governors.

The water and power minister said that with linking Hubco transmission line, completion of grid stations and other measures, the power outage problem of Karachi would be solved.

He claimed that Wapda had provided electricity to 9,000 villages in the current fiscal year and would provide the facility to another 13,000 villages during next year.

He said line losses had been reduced by two per cent during the current year.

About corruption, the minister said he had suspended from service 40 SDOs.

Some members stressed on switching over to alternative sources of energy and said instead of stressing on hydropower generation, solar, windmill, nuclear, coal and other sources of power generation should be searched.