ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has constituted a committee led by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar for Energy Resource Rationalisation.

Mr Dar presided over the meeting of the committee on Friday in which he approved a plan for reduction of system losses and directed the ministry of water and power to utilise the office of federal adjuster for recovery of arrears from the provincial governments.

An official statement said Federal Secretary Water and Power Nargis Sethi briefed the committee on various issues faced by the ministry of water and power in collecting the amount receivable from various sectors. She said that so far the amount payable to different sectors has been reduced to Rs244 billion which had earlier reached to Rs300 billion.

The committee noted the progress but desired that efforts need to be redoubled to improve the situation of recoveries and also lowering the amount payable to different entities. The finance minister informed the committee that the government was on track in the case of payment of subsidies to the power sector but this needed to be matched by efficiency in the system and reduction in pilferage.

Mussadik Malik, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister, presented a plan for loss reduction under which feeder wise corrections and smart metering would be required. The implementation of the proposal will be reviewed shortly by the committee.

The committee directed the secretary water and power to work on the federal adjuster front to reconcile arrears with the provinces on the issue of recoveries as early as possible. The secretary power was also directed to extend fullest cooperation to Mussadik Malik in the implementation of the loss reduction plan.

It was informed that feeder wise monitoring will be made in order to reduce line losses, improving recoveries and stop theft of the system. Rewards and incentives will be given to sub-divisional officers (SDOs) on improving performance in the said areas. As the first step, the work on monitoring performance of the feeders will be started from two distribution companies, each from Punjab and Sindh province.

Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and senior officials of the ministries of finance, water and power and petroleum also attended the meeting.

Published in Dawn, August 16th , 2014