Everyone would be willing to pay the price if it is guaranteed to be a fair one. It must not be inflated due to corruption, line losses and theft. People will be willing to pay the real price.

What do you think the government can do to resolve the energy crisis on an urgent basis? You asked! Government can't do nothing, It is intelligent Pakistani entrepreneur's who will come to the rescue, or as it is known "necessity is the mother of invention". Lets go. What happens If you connect 10 truck batteries, you have enough electricity for a normal house hold. Now to get this pack recharge, Build a small Thermodynamic generator/motor focusing a laser beam of burning Sun via convex lens, lenses rotating/aligning with the motion of sun whole year. And besides! Solution is in "the Shit" Excreta of man and animal produces huge amounts of methane (huge problem within-itself being a green house gas). If we can/should in our urban areas manage our shit properly we will have enough natural gas to have fire, fuel for everything and it is Green. And Lastly have you ever heard of Geothermal power plants. Iceland produces free electricity, free for costumers, freeing the planet mother Earth. You have my email address drop me a call, gonna need some cash! why not? But you won't! because then from where meter reader going to get bribe, Saudi royal oil they can fill there swimming pools with it, what about lineman etc. No, No, No all this fuss is about keeping common folks in invisible chains.

Encourage people to shift to LED lights from CFL bulbs & remove duties or even subsidise if possible solar panels in the domestic market. Start a nationwide drive for people to produce a certain percent of their own electricity requirements on their own rooftops. This will take some load off the national grid, if that 22 bn had gone this way, we'd be able to save more than what that much can generate being spent on outdated thermal power. Unless fuel theft & the "line losses" are checked it'll be practically impossible to expect the already oppressed law abiding minority bill payers to pay ever more for the inefficiencies of the govt. & the indifference of the thieving masses.

YES. But all the extra money should be used for the good cause. I support this whole heartedly for the sake of Pakistanis and our future generations.

Why can't the Government force consumers to ration on their consumption of electricity in a manner which will allow more even distribution of power load and reduce the need for so much loadshedding? Each house's meter should have a maximum monthly consumption allocation and once it is crossed then the power is disconnected i.e. cap the usage to prevent people from wasting too much power with too many AC's and wasteful consumption. In order to restore the consumption the user would have to pay a penalty fine.

Who will pay for line losses, corruption and theft? The tooth fairy? In the end it is always the consumer or the tax payer who bears the burden. You can have higher electricity prices or higher inflation. Take your pick!

Electricity prices will have to go up 40-50% just so that the electricity companies can break even. To clear the circular debt and raise funds for investment prices will have to go up even further! Anyway there is no point in kicking the can down the road. We should have higher prices.

The present situation of energy is caused by inefficiency and gross negligence of the government. Why should poor public pay for that?

Put an immediate stop to electricity theft by rewarding informers and locking up perpetrators and fining them heavily. At the same time raise the price of electricity such that the first x kilowatt-hours per capita used will cost the lowest, the next set of kilowatt-hours will cost a little more, and so on and so on.

All the problems we are facing as a nation are only due to the the negligence of our leaders. No one took this problem on a long run. There is no doubt that Govt. can resolve this problem if appropriate measures are adopted. i would rather support a rapid development on the long term measures like developing Dams as this would also help us in mitigating the water shortage and loss of water as this is also ruining our agriculture turning our lands into barren. Dams are the only appropriate option otherwise working on other sources of energy production may resolve our energy crises but neglecting construction of water reservoirs would trigger the problem of food security in the next coming years of our country. All the issue must be addressed with good and positive intentions otherwise the problems will be deepened with the passage of time.

Pay for more corruption? more ineptitude?? No way..even now with this loadshedding one would think that bills would be slashed but no way.. So if thats the direction the policy makers are planning to go they would have a thing coming their way!!

If Shahbaz Sharif, in a unilogue to the nation, instead of zealously specifying the time period for the decline of the loadshedding, suggests a realistic and specific approach to the goal, the nation might, and most probably will, unite to work together on bringing this curse down and lightening up Pakistan again, if not for the first time in our history e.g. enlightening the people on importance of shifting to LED lights. A million Dollar advertisement on the subject might not have the same effect as the government's request from the people to help themselves.

Energy crisis needs redical reforms. Government has to declare that it is not responsibility of goverment to provide energy to consumers. Rather government's responsibility is restricted to regulating business of providing energy to customers. This principal leads to desolution of WAPDA act and opens way to private production and distribution of energy. Its price will be determined by market forces. Experience of ex communist countries shows that market oriented reforms eradicate shortages

absolutely not! I am sick and tired of paying for corruption and incompetence of the institutions under the guise of necessary steps for reforms!

I come from a rather remote village near Peshawar. Over the past fifteen to twenty years, observing my neighborhood, nine out of ten households either do not have a meter at all, or have a meter but pay a monthly bill of not more than four to six hundred rupees per month. Make no mistake, that almost every second house has air conditioners and in addition, they use electric heaters for cooking. The load on transformers is sometime is so heavy, that it breaks down and then the same people go out, block the roads and protests against local DESCO. The transformers, of course, are fixed eventually and the cycle goes on. The whole local politics is played around transformers and electricity bills by local "Khans" and based on this the poor man makes up his mind for whom to cast his vote next time. At the same time, the Khans, most of them happens to be my first cousins, have an electric meter for the reason that they have to submit it to election commission for next local or national elections. Otherwise, they are not any different from any poor or middle class of my village. I do not blame the federal government, nor do I blame WAPDA, DESCO or any party for the current situation. Its a "Karma" of how everything that goes around comes around in life. You can make comprehensive plans for energy crises, but as long as you can not make convince people to pay for what the services they receive, all this is not going anywhere. I pay electricity bill up to six thousand rupees a month, I have a generator which costs a fortune every month, a UPS that needs maintenance on a bi-weekly basis. I want to get rid of my generator and UPS, since its costs hell more than 15 rupees per unit and I am willing to pay more, but I don't want to pay for my whole neighborhood, and not for my cousins and not for the poor man who uses heaters for cooking. I am not sure how to conclude, but we all have a Mr. 10% inside us to the extent of our authority over public funds. I remain cynical for now about all this.

Dude get realistic .. You are talking like 5th grade kid

People of Pakistan have already paid for this. How about seizing assets of these corrupt officials and selling them off to pay for this instead of taxing the people over and over again.

And there I was eagerly anticipating the Bullet trains. Pakistan is home to the Thar coal reserves which are apparently the 6th largest in the world and can meet energy needs for centuries. Pakistan could easily utilise these until more sustainable solutions are found, environmental friendliness would be the least of concerns for now. So it's still completely mind boggling why nothing substantial is being done in this regard. I suspect something more sinister is going with those who have been voted to power. Why would they care? Their air conditioning is on 24/7

I use solar hybrid system for office. It has reduced electricity bill by more than 50% and has resulted in reduction in the size of the UPS batteries. I took a number of other measures to cut down on electricity usage as well such as: efficient ceiling fans, LED lights, energy saving measures on computers, etc. There is plenty of sunshine in Pakistan and we should make solar energy a part of our energy mix.

Unless electricity theft is stopped, and current usage is properly billed and collection enforced, this "crisis" is unsolvable. For once, Pakistanis should accept personal responsibility and understand that there is a downside to the selfish culture that pervades our society. We don't pay either taxes or utility bills but are incensed when public services don't work. Corruption exacerbates this awful situation because leaders are a product of the same me-first society. We need investment in electricity generation to triple production over the next decade. This requires capital, and investment capital requires an adequate return. Before we discuss raising rates, let's have a grown-up discussion on how we can collect current rates.

give maximum power to the DISCOS or Feeders where there is no line losses/theft and maximum load shedding where line losses/theft is norm.

I think,We have to use our coal , wind and other resources to curb the loadsheding.This is the main hurdle in the progress of Pakistan.If we doesn't take any action against this isuue then what we would shift to our coming generation.We can't face the world until we make policies to mitigate loadsheding.We are going to fall due to loadsheding because it directly affects our economy and creat Unemployement,Terrorism,Uncertainty,lawlessness...etc.