HYDERABAD, Nov 24: The adviser to the Sindh chief minister on environment and alternate energy (E&AE), Noman Saigal, has blamed the federal government’s Alternate Energy Development Board (AEDB) for ignoring his department.

Referring to a windmill project in Gharo which was to be commissioned in December, he said provision of electricity from the windmill as well as its royalty to Sindh had not yet been decided because no representative of his department had been consulted in the matter by the AEDB.

The adviser was answering questions of journalists after inaugurating a free information technology awareness centre on Wednesday night.

“I’m not sure whether Sindh will get electricity out of this windmill project in Gharo to meet its shortfall of 300mw whereas the question of royalty to our province has also not been decided by the AEDB which is basically concerned with this project,” he said.

He said 18,000 acres of land had been acquired in Gharo and a Dutch firm had offered financial assistance to the Sindh government for a wind turbine project on 4,000 acres of land.

“I have not yet seen anything concrete from the 22 investors in response to their pledges to the windmill project,” he maintained. He said when the project was to operate in Sindh why its department concerned was being overlooked by the AEDB.

He said he planned to visit India to discuss some small- scale wind turbine projects with a Chennai-based company which could produce even one and half mega watts of electricity.

The adviser said a project of bio-gas to produce electricity by re-utilizing dung, stool and garbage was also pending.

“The E&AE has been created only in Sindh because we have winds blowing very fast, high tides and solar energy but this department is not being given importance,” he said.

He said his ministry did not have execution authority in respect of environmental issues and it could only monitor issues with regard to environmental pollution and hazards.

He said the environment department was now being devolved at the district government level where district and city governments would allocate budgets to this group of office also. He hoped that this would yield good results as far as environmental issues were concerned.

He said his department had demanded 150 environmental inspectors but not a single had been given to it.

Referring to water quality reports, he said the reports had been forwarded and it was up to higher authorities to look into the matter. He said the authorities should determine who was responsible for delaying implementation over the reports.