ISLAMABAD: Federal Energy Minister Awais Leghari has acknowledged serious shortcomings in the country’s power distribution system, saying poor practices within distribution companies (DISCOs) are contributing to load shedding.
Speaking at a National Assembly Standing Committee meeting, Leghari said some staff members were allegedly understating electricity demand in notices, which ultimately places a heavier load on the system.
He said DISCOs and their staff were responsible for many of the load-shedding feeders across the country, while the distribution network requires around Rs200 billion in investment to address infrastructure problems.
“These 200 billion will be recovered from the power consumers within 25 years,” he said.
Leghari said a plan had been prepared to improve the performance of DISCOs on the prime minister’s instructions.
“There are 14,000 power feeders in the country and power theft has been reported at 3,000 feeders,” he said.
He added that load shedding was significantly higher than the levels permitted to distribution companies.
“We will now shut the power from the transformer instead of the feeder, this will restrict the load-shading to the transformer level,” he said.