ISLAMABAD, April 30: Federal Minister for Water and Power Raja Pervez Ashraf told the Senate on Wednesday that the power supply situation would improve in seven months.

Answering a question during the question-hour session, the minister blamed the previous government’s ‘planning failure’ for the power crisis. He pointed out that there was a time when that government was talking about ‘surplus power’ and export of electricity to India.

The minister rejected apprehensions that the crisis would worsen in summer and said that hydro-power generation would increase in the season. He said that the government had initiated short- and long-term measures to overcome the crisis and end load-shedding.

He said arrangements were being made to generate 2,200 megawatts (MW) of power on an emergency basis. Under the short-term plan, 3,000MW of electricity would be generated by private sector while the same quantity would be generated by public sector.

The minister said at present there was a shortfall of over 3,000MW in the system. There was a gap of one third between the supply and demand. “That means you have no electricity for 8 hours every day,” he said, adding that besides short-term and long-term plans, 500MW was being generated through capacity enhancement of various units.

Mr Ashraf said the country had been facing power crisis for two years due to the gap between supply and demand. In order to minimise the duration of load-shedding, the Pakistan Electric Power Company had taken crisis management measures, he said, adding that a high-level Load Management Commission had been set up to oversee the programme.

He said the government was also looking at alternative resources to ease the situation.

Mr Ashraf said the government had allocated over Rs2.8 billion for the Kurram Tangi Dam project and Rs847 million had been released to Wapda for the purpose. He said the contract for the Gomal Zam dam had been re-awarded and 18.6 per cent work on the dam had been completed. He said the Frontier Works Organisation was responsible for designing and execution of works through their sub-contractors, M/s Sino-hydro Corporation for the dam and Hydropower Component and M/s Tekser for the Irrigation component.

The minister said work on the dam had restarted after much delay. The Chinese company stopped work after a kidnapping incident in October, 2004 and the contract was awarded to the FWO.

He said that the project was likely to be completed in January, 2010. At present, work on a diversion tunnel and some new roads was in progress.

The minister said that till March 31 Karachi had been facing a severe power crisis but after his visit to the city the situation improved considerably and MQM’s MNAs accepted the fact during a debate in the National Assembly.

He said his ministry had formed advisory committees of various distribution companies (Discos) of Wapda and appealed to parliamentarians to attend the meetings of the committees and give their suggestions to the government.

The minister informed the house that the government had announced a new petroleum policy last year with the objective of enhancing exploration activities and attracting investments from home and abroad. He said a decision had been taken to provide natural gas to people living in area of in five kilometres radius from places where the gas was produced.

Mr Ashraf assured the house that there would be no unannounced load-shedding. He brushed aside reports that the duration of load-shedding in some areas was around 18 hours a day and said the duration ranged from a minimum of two hours to a maximum of 12 hours.

He said the Prime Minister’s House had been exempted from load-shedding, but denied that he also was enjoying the facility.