ISLAMABAD, Sept 26: Wapda Chairman Tariq Hameed said on Tuesday that during last fiscal year, Wapda had spent Rs12 billion to upgrade its transmission system and the process would be completed by June 2007.

Speaking in a PTV programme, he said the authority would spend almost Rs25 billion more to improve power transmission system throughout the country.

Talking about the cause of Sunday’s countrywide power breakdown, he said that Wapda suspended power transmission on one of the three main lines from Rawat to Faisalabad for maintenance and put the load on the two others one of which developed a fault near Gatti and Faisalabad power station.

As a result, he said, about 16 million consumers faced hardship, adding that they wanted to inform the people about the situation but there was no way as communication system also had failed at that time.

Mr Hameed said that

Wapda engineers after hectic efforts rectified the fault on Sunday which occurred due to tripping in one of the generators at the Tarbela Dam power house.

Such breakdowns were a phenomenon associated with large integrated transmission systems, he said, adding that such power breakdowns could not be stopped.—APP