PESHAWAR: Adviser to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister on energy and power Himayatullah Khan on Friday said the government would continue encouraging alternative energy solutions to address the needs of off-grid areas in the province.

He was addressing the concluding session of a two-day workshop on ‘Sustaining Mini-Micro Hydro Units’ arranged by the Pakhtunkhwa Electric Development Organisation (Pedo) and Sarhad Rural Support Programme at the Human Resource Development Centre of the Sarhad Rural Support Programme in Hayatabad here.

The workshop, which was attended by Pedo’s partner organisations, producers and civil society organisations, was meant to discuss the issues of sustaining mini-micro hydro projects in the province.

CM aide says govt invested over Rs20bn in power sector

Mr Himayatullah said the cost of extending the grid to such areas was exorbitant and it got even very expensive in terms of maintainability.

He said the government had invested over Rs20 billion in the sector to ensure that remote regions benefit from the generation of electricity.

The CM’s adviser said the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government had handed over a number of dysfunctional units established by the Pedo to civil society organisations and they, within a short time, were upgraded and made functional providing electricity to tourist spots like Kalam.

He said there was a long history of community-run mini-hydropower projects in the region.

Mr Himayatullah, however, said the larger units which had been established in the Pedo-funded projects called for putting in a lot of ingenuity to tackle the issues of financial, managerial and social sustainability and those of land rights and water rights that had to be addressed in sustaining them.

He said the two good models had been demonstrated in Chitral and Swat by the SRSP and Aga Khan Rural Support Programme under the Social Enterprise and utility models, which had shown a path that could be taken for sustaining these systems.

The CM’s aide said those models needed to be examined closely and a solution found that was the best fit for each area which showed a lot of cultural and social diversity.

“There could not be one solution but there could be many solutions but they must ensure that the communities have regular and good quality electricity and are not exploited while setting electricity tariff and a sound and transparent management system to run them sustainably,” he said.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2021