Daily Times

Sir: Energy is considered to be very important part of any economy and a very important element for its socioeconomic development because through the help of energy industries can work well and with the development of industries, countries developed.

Pakistan’s energy infrastructure is not well developed, rather it is considered to be underdeveloped and poorly managed that’s why Pakistan is a country facing worst energy crisis in its history and it is lacking energy since long time back with the fact that in today’s advance world the need for energy is kept on increasing with the population growth. This shortage of energy hit the Pakistan economy so hard and causes to effect the economic growth of country.

According to Sartaj Aziz, former Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, “The primary reason for persistent load shedding and energy crisis in the country has been the non-judicious energy policy of the mid-nineties that relied heavily on expensive thermal power generation as opposed to lower cost options.” Changing the primary source of electricity generation from 50 percent each of thermal and hydel to one of 70:30 in summer and 80:20 in winter became the origin of Pakistan’s energy crisis and caused the cost of power generation went up to 1-16 cents per unit.

Power shortage, in the form of load-shedding and power outages, cost the Pakistan economy in billion. 500,000 households faced unemployment as businesses have been forced to shut down due to energy shortages. Many industrial sectors like textile industry, automobile industry, petroleum industry and many more facing worst consequences because of energy crisis in country. Agricultural productivity of Pakistan is decreasing due to provision of energy for running tube wells, agricultural machinery and production of fertilizers and pesticides. And Declination in economic growth, lower agricultural productivity, unemployment and shackling industrial growth result in increasing poverty which in the end effect the country’s economy and its growth.

Over 140 million Pakistanis either don’t have access to power or they have to face load shedding of over 12 hours daily. According to the experts River Indus has the potential to generate more than 40,000MW electricity per annum, 10,000MW electricity per annum can be generated from other smaller hydel plants. In addition to that 50,000MW electricity can be produced annually from coal. But with all these resources available, only 8,000 MW of power is generated currently which goes down when the water level is low in dams.

Pakistan is rich in resources that could be used for energy production. These resources include both renewable resources like hydropower and solar power and non-renewable resources as gas, coal and petroleum products. Pakistan should take full advantage of those rich resources to overcome such issue. To decrease energy crisis people should focus on reducing unnecessary energy use. We also urge officials to pursue a more affordable energy mix.

This will require less focus on expensive imports and more focus on indigenous reserves. Moreover, they should also focus on alternative energy resources for power generation like wind power, biomass and solar energy which has a huge potential in Pakistan. However, this will take time but energy crisis can be eliminated from the country.

SAWAIRA SADIQ

Via Email

Published in Daily Times, October 23^rd 2018.