LAHORE, Jan 12: Wapda chairman Muhammad Shakil Durrani says that about 25,000 Megawatt potential hydro-electric projects have been identified for starting work during the next five to six years.

Speaking at the concluding session of the national conference of the Pakistan Wapda Hydro-Electric Central Labour Union at the Bakhtiar Labour Hall here on Saturday with its president Abdul Latif Nizamani in the chair, he said work on 1,000MW Neelum-Jhelum hydropower project would start this month.

Wapda was also preparing to start work on Kurram Tungi, Gomal Zam and Munda dams. An announcement about Thar coal-based power generation was also expected during the next few weeks.

He said loadshedding this year exceeded 4,000MW because no major power project had been executed in the public sector during the past 25 years. The projects proposed to be executed during the next five to six years had been identified after 2004 when Mr.Tariq Hamid took over as the Wapda chairman. He said Wapda could generate power at the rate of Rs2 per unit but thermal power generation contracts were awarded to the private sector at the rate of Rs6 to 7 per unit instead.

He said the authority considered its employees its integral part and had done everything possible for their welfare. It was spending Rs1 billion on providing healthcare facilities to them at 11 hospitals and 24 dispensaries. A state-of-the-art burn unit had also been established at the Wapda Hospital in Lahore. The authority had taken back its school at Mangla from the provincial government and was upgrading it to the cadet college level along with its schools in the four provinces.

He said the authority had enhanced the marriage grant for the children of Wapda employees by Rs5,000 and decided to deduct house rent at the rate of five per cent of basic pay instead of the existing pay. It had also decided to provide free education to one child of its employees till the age of 18 years after their demise. All the children of employees losing their lives in accidents would be provided with free education till the age of 18 years and their widows would be allowed housing facility for five years after the death of their husbands.

He said Wapda had upgraded the posts of all its scale-1 to 4 employees by one grade and brought the insurance cover of assistant linemen on a par with linemen. It was now commercialising its petrol pumps for raising more funds for the welfare of the employees. It would negotiate on the charter of demands of the union after Muharram.

Union secretary-general Khurshid Ahmed said the Wapda chairman was facing the challenge of dispensing with the unprecedented power loadshedding which was the direct outcome of the government’s policies. Wapda continued offering to generate power at half the cost of the private sector but the government continued declining the offer under World Bank and IMF pressure. He said former prime minister Shaukat Aziz even deceived the nation last year by stating that there was no power shortage.