LAHORE, Oct 31: Mangla dam raising will provide an additional 2.88 million acre feet (MAF) water, 644 Gigawatt hour (Gwh) additional electricity and the project is expected to complete by April 2008.
Wapda Chairman Shakil Durrani said this here on Wednesday while briefing a delegation comprising the participants of National Defence Course at National Defence University. The delegation headed by Air Vice-Marshall Faaiz Amir visited WAPDA House.
Addressing the delegation, Member (Water) Mushtaq Chaudhry said the increasing population and depleting storage capacity of Pakistan’s water reservoirs called for constructing more than one mega dams without any further delay. He said another 22.5 million acres of virgin land could be brought under cultivation by building new mega dams.
He revealed that Pakistan had already lost water storage capacity by 28 per cent on account of sedimentation, which had now come down to 13.17maf from 18.37maf. He said an average of 32.81maf water had been escaping downstream Kotri Barrage annually since 1976.
Mr Chaudhry told the delegates that Pakistan was heading towards acute water shortage as the per capita water availability had already come down to an alarming figure of 1,070 cubic meter in 2007.
It is pertinent to mention that a country, according to the universally accepted parameters, is declared water scarce if per capita availability reduces to 1,000 cubic meters.
Referring to the hydropower development projects being executed by Wapda, Member Water said the authority was vigorously carrying out studies of as many as 12 mega hydropower projects with a total capacity of more than 10,000MW electricity, mainly including Bunji, Dasu and Kohala etc.
Managing Director of Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) Munawar B Ahmed, dilating upon the power sector, told the delegation that presently per capita consumption of energy in Pakistan was only 15 million British Thermal Unit (Btu) against the world average of 68 million Btu. This, he said, had placed the country in the category of energy deficient countries in the world.
A more realistic approach has now been adopted to make Pakistan an energy efficient country. The delegation was told that the reforms were being introduced to make power sector more efficient, customer friendly and commercially viable on sustainable basis.
He said load cycle management, energy conservation, loss reduction, revamping generation units and additional generation capacity were being employed for minimising the gap between consumption and generation of electricity in the country.
He said collection of revenue amounting to Rs410.4 billion, reduction in line losses to 20.6 per cent and provision of one million new connections were the major targets for 2007-08. In addition, as many as 7,500 more villages would be electrified during July-December 2007, he added.
Later, the Wapda chairman, member (Water) and Pepco MD answered the questions raised by the delegates.