LAHORE, Dec 16: The Engineers Study Forum has urged President Pervez Musharraf to constitute an energy monitoring commission, comprising independent experts and public representatives, to take stock of the current crisis and propose short and long term measures to resolve it.

A spokesman for the forum said in a statement that the ongoing power crisis marked by massive loadshedding was the result of gross mismanagement of national power system.

The current electricity shortage resulting from the absence of power demand forecast system in Wapda and KESC and timely increase in power generation on a fast track basis through prudent investment policies, was likely to aggravate during the summer, causing the worst kind of loadshedding hitting the industry, agriculture and business.

The spokesman was of the view that the crisis could be resolved by recovering 40 per cent of the power from the system through effective demand-side management in accordance with the proven international power system benchmarks. —Reporter