April 10, 2017
President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum (PBIF), President AKIA, Senior Vice Chairman of the Businessmen Panel of FPCCI and former provincial minister Mian Zahid Hussain rehabilitation of operational power plants can increase electricity generation by one hundred percent without any additional cost.
Decision of constructing dozens of power plants is good but the older ones should also be given some attention as their proper maintenance is not very costly, he said.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that water storage capacity should be increased and hydel projects should be initiated without any further delay.
He said that unnecessary delay in construction of dams has increased dependence on imported oil which has left country open to oil price shocks that results in foreign loans on harsh conditions.
A foreign experts has proposed to construct Chiniot dam in 1959 which would have generated 60 megawatt of electricity resulting in profit of five billion rupees per annum and countered the floods resulting in losses to the tune of billions to the rural economy but the proposal was never accepted nor rejected.
He said that per capita water availability has reduced by 425 percent since 1951 while water storage capacity is 25 days while India is storing water for its ninety days need.
Increasing population requires government to take steps to increase water availability and storage otherwise people will have to face food security problem, he added.
The business leader said that we have 197 million acre of land out of which only 52 million acre is used for agricultural production due to scarcity of water which should be noticed.
He said that increased agricultural and industrial production will remain a dream unless new dams are constructed as the capacity of existing dams is decreasing with a rapid pace.
