Jailed PTI leaders criticise government over prolonged loadshedding

LAHORE: Five Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf leaders incarcerated at Kot Lakhpat jail have criticised the federal government over prolonged power outages, saying it should address the actual problems facing the power sector instead of, in their words, shifting responsibility.

In a statement issued through their counsel Rana Mudassar Umer, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Dr Yasmin Rashid, Ejaz Chaudhry, Omer Sarfraz Cheema and Mian Mehmoodur Rashid said the country’s power division had an installed generation capacity of 46,000MW but was still unable to handle the current peak demand of 19,000MW.

“With announced power outages of two-and-a-half hours, people in urban areas were suffering seven to eight hours of loadshedding, while those living in rural areas were trying to cope with loadshedding ranging between 12 and 18 hours every day”.

According to the statement, Power Minister Awais Leghari had told the public that the outages were being carried out to shield consumers from higher electricity bills.

The jailed PTI leaders said the Middle East crisis, which they described as having been triggered by the US-Israeli war against Iran, had disrupted LNG supplies and that this was the main reason for the current loadshedding, which they said was beyond the government’s control.

However, they added that if the energy mix of coal, solar, wind, hydel and nuclear power was examined, these sources together were providing no more than 6,000MW.

They further said the power minister had acknowledged there was no load management issue in the southern parts of the country and that Pakistan had surplus electricity, but it could not be transmitted to northern and central regions because of transmission limitations.

“It seems that our power division has learnt nothing from the oil crisis of 2022, and has failed to address structural vulnerabilities identified four years ago”.

The PTI leaders said the minister should recognise that the present energy crisis was not solely the result of the Middle East conflict. They said the regional situation had added pressure, but maintained that the crisis was deeper and more complicated than the government was presenting.

They also said the power division should acknowledge the public’s role in what they described as a solar revolution, stating that people had added 18,000MW of solar energy through private investment and had saved billions of dollars over the past eight years by reducing the need for additional fossil fuel imports.

“Instead of appreciating the private investors who contributed to the solar revolution in the country, they are living under the constant threat of discontinuity of the net metering policy. When will our planners realise that the future path is renewable energy?”.

The statement also questioned why a country capable of generating 50,000MW of clean and inexpensive hydel electricity had installed costly independent power producer plants based on imported fuel.

“What was the logic in providing sovereign guarantees for capacity payments, which have contributed to our circular debt crisis? Did anyone hold the architects of the IPP policy accountable for the rise in electricity tariffs?”.

The statement was issued on behalf of the five jailed PTI leaders from Kot Lakhpat jail.