LAHORE, Dec 26: Wapda chairman Tariq Hamid has proposed staggering of weekly holidays for industry to cope with power shortage. Talking to Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Shahid Hasan Sheikh and other office-bearers here on Tuesday, he said 399MW power could be made available for trade and industry by staggering of weekly holidays.

He said Wapda was planning to club its loadshedding schedule with Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited so that both the gas and power utilities were available to consumers on same days. January had always been a problem month for Wapda because of decrease in releases from major dams and cut in gas supply to power plants. Conversion of a large number of automobiles on CNG had further increased pressure on gas supply.

He said power generation was required to be 20 per cent more than consumption but both had become equal. Consumption was increasing by 1,000MW every year and could result in acute shortage in three years if generation capacity was not increased.

He briefed the LCCI office-bearers about the power projects being upgraded at different places.

Chamber president Shahid Hassan Sheikh said the country might not be able to maintain its momentum of growth due to shortage of energy which had started forcing many industries to scale down their operations.

The gap between demand and supply of power had surged to 3,000MW and was expected to go up to 5,000MW in next two years as generation had been increased by only 10 per cent since 1999 against over eight per cent annual rise in demand.