July 10, 2008	Thursday	Rajab 6, 1429

LONDON, July 9: The coalition government has undertaken a series of initiatives to steer the country out of the debilitating power crisis and the country will overcome electricity shortage within a couple of years.

In his first interaction with the ethnic media at the High Commission on Tuesday, the newly-appointed Pakistan High Commissioner Wajid Shamsul Hasan said the government was attaching top priority to resolving the power crisis.

He recalled that during the last government of Benazir Bhutto, the PPP government had invested $5 billion in the power sector, leading to the addition of 4,000 megawatts to the national grid.

Mr Hasan said since then not a single megawatt had been added to the grid which, according to him, had led to the present crisis.

He blamed former senator Saif-ur-Rehman for hounding out the foreign investors who were willing to invest further in the power sector in Pakistan.

On the exploration of Thar coal, he said during the rule of the last government, a Chinese company had written some 60 letters to the petroleum ministry but when no response was received, it withdrew from the country.