15th meeting of the Standing Committee on Power was held today at 2:00 p.m. in the Committee Room no. 7, Fourth Floor, Parliament House, Islamabad. With the consensus of the Members present, the meeting was chaired by Engr. Sabir Hussain Kaim Khani, MNA.

The meeting started with the recitation from the Holy Quran. Afterwards, the Committee proceeded with the agenda of the meeting.

The Committee confirmed the minutes of its fourteenth meeting held on 20th September 2021.

The Committee took two Bills on its agenda namely, “Pakistan Penal Code (Amendment) Bill, 2019”, and “The Regulation of Generation, Transmission and Distribution of Electric Power (Amendment) Bill, 2021” that were introduced by the government. The Ministry gave a briefing on the said Bills; however, both the Bills were deferred owing to observations raised by the Committee. The Ministry also briefed the Committee on the compliance status of its recommendations in the previous meeting. It was informed that a major chunk of the estimated expenditure in lieu of crop compensation to the landowners affected due to the projects of high transmission poles installed under CPEC Plan had been made. Nonetheless, the Committee recommended that the Ministry should compensate the leftover landowners at the earliest and make the remaining payments by 2nd week of November 2021. The Committee also took notice of the issues of power shortages and persistent load shedding in the areas of Ex-FATA. The concerned DISCO was directed to provide an inclusive solution for those areas by taking the concerned legislators on board. On a query raised by the Committee, it was apprised by the IESCO that in order to ensure that the connections were being provided to a legitimized entity, the new electricity connections in the developing areas of Federal Capital were being provided only subject to a NOC by the Capital Development Authority. The issue concerning the recent increase in the electricity tariff by NEPRA and the performance of Karachi Electric was also discussed. The Committee, after considering that some of the issues required further deliberation, directed the Ministry to prepare a briefing on those points and to present a detailed report in its upcoming meeting accordingly.

Honorable Members/MNAs Mr. Sher Akbar Khan, Mehar Ghulam Muhammad Lali, Malik Anwar Taj, Mr. Saif Ur Rehman, Mian Riaz Hussain Pirzada, Syed Ghulam Mustafa Shah and Mr. Zahid Akram Durrani attended the meeting. The senior officials from the Ministry of Power and other concerned departments were also present during the meeting.