Day: July 4, 2022

ISLAMABAD: The Meeting of National Coordination Committee on Foreign Funded Projects (NCC-FFP) was held here at the Ministry of Economic Affairs on Monday to review the Foreign Funded World Bank Project – “Hydro-Met and Climate Services Project worth $188-million”.

The Meeting was chaired by the Federal Secretary for Economic Affairs, Mian Asad Hayauddin and was attended by the Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Economic Affairs, Federal Secretary Climate Change, World Bank team and other senior officials.

The Federal Secretary for Economic Affairs briefed the participants about the purpose of Hydro-Met and Disaster Risk Management Services Project for Pakistan that is to strengthen Pakistan’s Public Sector delivery of reliable and timely Hydro-Meteorological and Disaster Risk Management Services and enhance community resilience to shocks.

He emphasized the need to address the issues of problematic projects on urgent basis, especially those facing chronic delays so as to pace up disbursements and progress. Special Assistant to Prime Minister for Economic Affairs emphasized the need of quick delivery and resolution of issues that are becoming obstacle to the completion of the project.

For which, he directed tasks to expedite the process of approvals, signings, implementation and monitoring to the involved stakeholders of the project. During the session, the decisions were recorded and deadline was given to the executing agencies to be followed rigorously. The follow-up meeting is decided to be held on August 15 to discuss further progress and monitor compliance of the decisions.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chairman and former Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the amendments to the Elections Act, 2017.

According to the petition amendments to the Elections Act, 2017 disallow the overseas Pakistanis from voting electronically, thus they are discriminatory and violative of fundamental rights and merits.

Federation of Pakistan through the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, the Ministry of Law and Justice, the Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) and the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) have been made as respondents in the petition.

The petition states that the amendment made to Section 94(1) violated the fundamental right to vote of 10 million overseas Pakistanis, who send home remittances of approximately $30 billion annually, constituting approximately 10 per cent of Pakistan’s gross domestic product”.

The petition further states that under Article 5(2) of the Constitution, overseas Pakistanis were subject to the laws of Pakistan and even to its tax laws under “certain circumstances”.

ISLAMABAD: The federal cabinet at its meeting chaired by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif here in Islamabad on Monday decided to install only indigenous fuel power plants in future to meet the growing electricity requirements of the country.

The meeting was given a detailed briefing on the current load shedding in the country. Later, briefing the media persons, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb said the existing electricity generation capacity is 23900 megawatts whilst the demand reached the historic level of thirty thousand megawatts last month.

She regretted the ongoing power projects were delayed by the PTI government. Minister for Power Khurram Dastagir said that Karot hydropower project of 720 megawatts under the CPEC has now been made operational.

He said the cabinet was informed that the projects of 4623 megawatts initiated by the PML-N back in 2013-18 will become operational by next year. He said a total of seven thousand megawatts of electricity will come to the system including from these projects as well as solar power and private net metering by next year which will help address the issue of load shedding.

Referring to the increased inflow of water into Tarbela, he was confident that the electricity production from this source will reach to the maximum of 3500 megawatts in the next few days whilst generation of 1100 megawatts from K-2 nuclear plant will also start in the same period which will help reduce load shedding to a great extent and help provide relief to the people during Eid ul Azha.

The Minister for Power said the government is also considering a comprehensive policy on solar energy. He said the focus will be on large scale plants as well as supporting the small consumers to install small plants. He said government buildings will also be converted to solar.

Adviser on Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan Qamar Zaman Kaira said the Prime Minister has directed to minimize the power outages to three hours. He said the PTI government delayed projects of about four thousand megawatts which had to be completed by 2020 or 2021. He said the country would not have been faced with the current situation, if these projects were timely completed.

Minister for Board of Investment Chaudhry Salik Hussain said the present government is serious to address the problems faced by the people including that of the power outages. To a question, Khurram Dastagir said that as per directions of the Prime Minister government is putting its efforts to improve the management of DISCOs.

He said for this purpose use of modern technology is indispensable. He said a plan will be framed for installing smart meters for automatic bill generation from January next year. The Minister said under the vision Prime Minister to support the poor segment of the society, the government has decided not to apply any increase in prices of electricity to the consumers who use less than one hundred units. He said a reform package will be announced soon to replace free electricity of WAPDA employees to incentivize salary.