PESHAWAR: The Pakhtunkhwa Energy Development Organisation’s board of directors was informed on Friday that the provincial government had approved the award of 10 hydropower projects of 338 megawatts to the private sector.

A statement issued here said the hydropower projects would bring several million dollars worth of investment to the province.

The board meeting was chaired by its chairman Sahibzada Saeed Ahmad and attended by energy and power secretary Shakeel Qadir Khan, additional secretary of finance department Adeel Shah, deputy secretary of home department Akmal Khattak, engineer Latif Khan, Abdullah Shah, Fuad Ishaq, Saeed Chughtai and Usman Rasool.

Govt says projects to bring several million dollars investment to KP

The board was informed that the projects would also generate employment and produce cheap power in the province.

In order to utilise cheap source for energy, the government has also begun work on the new renewable energy policy with focus on hydel, solar and wind power sources.

An official told Dawn that there were seven semi-raw sites and three raw sites for the purpose.

He said semi-raw sites would generate 87 megawatts of power and raw sites 300.35MW.

The official said of the raw sites, two were located in Chitral and Swat each and three in Mansehra, and of raw sites, two were located in Swat and one in Dir.

He said the feasibility studies would be carried out and the prospective bids would be later placed before the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) for approval.

He said the Pedo board showed satisfaction with the Nepra’s move to ask the relevant authorities for reasons for non-implementation of the Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) regarding four 74MW hydropower stations completed through the province-owned resources recently.

Among those projects are 18MW Pehur hydel power project in Swabi, 2.6MW Machai in Mardan, 17MW Ranolia in Kohistan and 37MW Daral Khawr in Swat.

With the provincial government trying to push the federal authorities for many months to sign power purchase agreement for Pehur and Machai, the officials said the National Transmission and Dispatch Company was showing reluctance in installing meters to enable Pedo to connect the power station with the national grid.

They said in case of Daral Khwar, the provincial government felt that Pesco showed reluctance to connect the project with the national grid.

The board expressed the hope that power purchase agreements would be signed soon and that the province would earn billions of earning through powerhouses built from province’s own sources.

It was informed that the PPA of Pehur was in final stages, while the province would be paid Rs1.5 billion in installments.

The board also discussed the appointment of chief executive officer of Pedo, upgradation of employees, annual increase of five per cent increments of project employees, training policy, health insurance of employees, appointment of O&M specialist and audit advisor matters were discussed.

Energy and power secretary Shakeel Qadir Khan constituted a committee to resolve the issues pertaining to Pedo’s employees.

Board chairman Sahibzada Saeed called for the improvement of quality of work in managerial and financial matters of organisation.

He asked the relevant officials to maintain transparency in their matters.

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2018