LAHORE, July 25: Federal Water and Power Minister Liaquat Ali Jatoi on Tuesday assured the Standing Committee of the National Assembly on Water and Power that there would be no unannounced loadshedding any where in the country.

The assurance was given at a meeting of the committee with MNA Malik Ghulam Murtaza in the chair which met here at Wapda House to review the overall power situation in the country.

He informed the committee that a comprehensive plan, to be made public soon, had been chalked out in this regard to deal with the situation effectively.

The minister said that all villages in Pakistan would be electrified by next year and all-out efforts were being made by Wapda to provide better service to people at their doorsteps. He said although people were facing power outages, Wapda was performing its duties satisfactorily after having absorbed financial crunch. Gradual rise in petroleum products prices has adversely affected monetary health of this mega organization, he said.

Mr Jatoi further informed the committee that he had directed the Wapda chairman, member (power) and all the chief executives of the distribution companies across the country to devise a loadshedding plan taking care of the problems being confronted by the segment of society.

The minister assured that all recommendations of the committee to further improve the power transmission and distribution system would be given due weightage.

Wapda Chairman Tariq Hamid informed the meeting that the authority would inject huge investment from its own resources to augment and upgrade the existing transmission and distribution network to ensure smooth and uninterrupted power supply to all consumers.

Member (Power) Chaudhry Muhammad Anwar Khalid in response to a question informed that Wapda had spent a hefty amount of Rs13.60 billion on improvement of the system during the last 18 months while Rs30 billion would be utilised during the next two years which included construction of new grid stations and erection of high transmission line and upgradation of existing grids. —APP