April 15, 2007	Sunday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 26, 1428

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LAHORE, April 14: Wapda’s former member (power) and Electric Power Forum president S.T.H.Naqvi says Wapda should immediately restore 250 megawatt supply to Karachi which it has cut recently.

Talking to Dawn here on Saturday, Mr Naqvi said he had been in Karachi for some days recently and found the people experiencing a great deal of inconvenience due to long hours of loadshedding and adverse effect of power shortage on industries.

He said Wapda had been supplying about 750mw power to Karachi to supplement KESC generation but it had cut 250mw of its supply to ease power supply position on its network in rest of the country. He said Wapda could cut its power supply to rural areas and save the people of Karachi from miserable situation.

Mr Naqvi also questioned the Wapda’s demand to Indus River System Authority (Irsa) to allow it to increase release of water from its reservoirs to augment generation from its hydropower to meet the prevailing shortage in the country. He said release of additional water from reservoirs would cause shortage for Kharif crops in the coming months.

“Irsa has done well by refusing the Wapda’s demand as it will amount to wasting water at the present time.”

He said Wapda had not taken necessary measures to overcome the prevailing power shortage as the generation capacity of its own thermal power stations had dropped from 4,750mw to less than 2,000mw and the situation would deteriorate further unless more thermal plants were installed or the present ones augmented, balanced and modernised.

He said even Independent Power Producers (IPPs) were running their thermal plants at full capacity of about 7,000mw without any standby or alternative arrangements to cope with any emergency.

The IPPs’ electricity was costing Wapda on average Rs7 per unit against its own thermal power at the rate of Rs2.50 to Rs3 per unit and it was incurring a heavy loss every year, he added.