If revision is not possible, the government should buy expensive IPPs, Chairman WAPDA – Pakistan

Chairman WAPDA Lieutenant General (retd) Sajjad Ghani says that the situation in the power sector is really dire but ‘new will not sink’.

In a special conversation in today’s news program “Robro”, Chairman WAPDA, talking about the curses and abuses of people, said that WAPDA has no special role in the electricity crisis, it neither transmits electricity nor distributes. “WAPDA is accepting all the allegations with a lot of innocence, WAPDA has nothing to do with today’s crisis”.

He said that the work of WAPDA at present is only to build big dams, install and run big projects and generate electricity from them.

He said that currently the largest hydropower projects in the history of the country are being built, WAPDA’s power generation capacity is currently 9,500 megawatts, which we are going to more than double in the next five years, i.e. 11,000 megawatts. More megawatts are going to be built, which will come into the system, the price of electricity will become cheaper and 11 million acre feet of water will be available for agriculture.

When will the people’s dream of cheap electricity be fulfilled? Speaking in this regard, Lieutenant General (retd) Sajjad Ghani said that WAPDA is supplying electricity at the rate of four rupees per unit even in the most expensive conditions of that time. I am, it has some incompetence, some theft and some reliance on IPPs.

He said that Pakistan should depend on hydropower, but unfortunately at present hydropower is meeting 25% of the needs, the main reason is that we have wasted forty years, the last big dam was Tarbela. was built in the seventies and now Diamar, Bhasha and Mohmand dams are being built. Kalabagh Dam should have been built in the eighties and Diamer Bhasha Dam in the nineties.

He said that even today Kalabagh Dam is economically the most viable and buildable dam that can be built even today.

He said that Mohmand Dam will be enough for Peshawar region.

Chairman Wapda said that today it is easier to bring the political characters on the same page regarding the construction of this dam, a large part of Sindh was drowned in the recent floods, now there is a realization in Sindh that the flood water accumulated in Sindh. The wind should have accumulated somewhere in the north, that is, some dams should have been built to hold back the flood water.

Talking about the possibility of revision of agreements with IPPs, he said that every agreement in the world has scope for revision, no agreement is watertight, provided both parties agree that Circumstances demand that we review. “If in such a case this revision is not possible by the IPPs, then my opinion and advice would be that in the next few years the government of Pakistan should purchase the expensive IPPs itself.”

Chairman WAPDA said that public private partnership can be formed to buy these IPPs.

In response to a question, Lt. Gen. (retd) Sajjad Ghani said that “Pakistan’s forces are very sensitive about all the security issues of the country being kept together with the government in such a way that something like this happens.” There are pillars of a state (state) that should not be weakened, in which the economy is a very big and very strong pillar.

In response to another question, he said that WAPDA does not give any money to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government in the form of net hydel profit on water resources, they have to be paid by the Central Power Purchasing Agency (CPPA). It gives money, we give it to the province, at this time the dues of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on CPPA are about 34 billion rupees.