October 15, 2008	Wednesday	Shawwal 15, 1429

LAHORE, Oct 14: The Pakistan Electric Power Company is facing a deficit of over 4,000MW against a demand of over 14,000MW, causing countrywide protests against loadshedding.

A Pepco official told Dawn on Tuesday that the company could not do anything to reduce loadshedding because its overstretched generation system was facing a huge deficit.

“It can only request people to understand causes of the crisis that are beyond the mandate of the company.”

Listing reasons for the drop in generation, the official said that the water releases from Tarbela Dam had been cut to 33,700 cusecs per day from over 100,000 cusecs last week, and from Mangla lake to 29,000 cusecs from 39,000 cusecs a few days ago.

He said the company had suffered a drop of 4,300MW in hydel power generation to 1,800MW from 6,100MW last week.

Reduction in gas supply to rental power and Faisalabad Gas Turbine Station had also caused another loss of over 350MW, he added.

The previous highest deficit during the current season was 3,500MW — a generation of 13,500MW against a demand of 17,000MW.

Talking about Monday’s pledge of the federal minister for water and power that there would be no “unannounced loadshedding”, he said: “If reality bends to talk, there would be no loadshedding at all in the country. But, unfortunately, that has not been the case. The country is faced with huge a power shortage, so neither Pepco nor the ministry can do anything about it.”

He said that conceding over 10-hour a day loadshedding would be politically and socially too risky for the government. The ministry would call it “unannounced” loadshedding and blame it on Pepco despite being fully in the picture about the supply and demand situation.

About the sacking of some Pepco employees, the official said the action might provide some political mileage to the government, but it would not solve the problem.

He said that power generation did not seem to be a priority area for any government agency.

“The Indus River System Authority squeezes water as per its irrigation priorities and gas companies stop supplies as per their own maintenance schedule without even bothering to consult Pepco. With both inputs virtually squeezed out of existence where would the power come from.”