KARACHI: National Forum for Environment and Health (NFEH) Friday appealed to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and other relevant federal authorities to immediately step in to save the Pakistani solar industry from utter collapse by removing undue restrictions on the import of renewable electricity equipment that have been in place for the past several months.
In a statement, NFEH President Muhammad Naeem Qureshi said that the intervention of the federal government had become inevitable to save the jobs of thousands of professionals and technicians who are associated with the solar industry. Qureshi said the government in no way could achieve its ambitious plans of producing electricity through alternative energy means if the ban on solar equipment remained in place any further.
He lamented that several renewable energy companies that had either joined or had the willingness to join the government’s drive to produce clean energy were on the verge of collapse due to undue restrictions on the import of solar power equipment. The NFEH President said that up to 500 shipping containers having solar energy equipment had been stuck at the port for the past many months due to import restrictions as the concerned importers had no means to pay millions of rupees as demurrage.
He said the concerned installers and service providers had run out of stock of solar equipment resultantly they being unable to honour their commitments to install new renewable energy systems. Qureshi said the domestic, industrial, and commercial consumers were not able to install solar power systems as their plans to meet their own electricity needs through renewable means had come to a grinding halt.
He said that unnecessary import restrictions had also halted plans to energize off-grid homes in faraway areas and tube wells in the farmlands through solar power. The NFEH President said that these import restrictions should immediately be removed as solar power was going to become a major resource to energize homes to be built by the government and other donors for the resettlement of the flood-affected people.
He appealed to the federal government to immediately withdraw the import restrictions on solar power equipment to rescue the renewable energy industry and also to meet its own goals of producing clean electricity in Pakistan.