Power minister wants provinces to take lead in giving subsidy

Days after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif promised a “significant cut” in electricity prices “soon”, the power minister on Friday said giving any timeline about the relief’s implementation would be “premature”.

In his speech on Independence Day, PM Shehbaz said electricity bills were people’s biggest concern, and his government would announce a significant cut in electricity tariffs in the “next few days”.

During an interview with the Voice of America’s Urdu service, Minister for Power Awais Laghari was asked when the tariffs, as announced by the PM, would be reduced. In his reply, Mr Leghari refused to give specifics and instead asked the provincial governments to come forward and announce a Punjab-like power subsidy.

“We do want to offer relief [to power consumers],” he said, adding that work is still ongoing on “when we would offer [the relief] and how would we do that”.

“I don’t want to share anything prematurely.”

Even though Mr Leghari’s fresh remarks dashed the hopes of people expecting a swift relief, he tried to keep up the spirits by suggesting the provincial governments take the lead in this regard.

He said provinces should take this initiative and provide relief to people, as the Punjab government has done to protect people from high electricity bills.

“Punjab has recently given relief to its people consuming [between 200 to] 500 units,” he said.

“It’s a huge relief which would make a significant difference. So if other provincial governments show some courage and I think they should do that, they would be offering a good relief against not a very huge amount.”

The minister said the Sindh government could offer similar relief to the consumers in Karachi for just Rs7 billion and in the rest of the province for Rs3bn.

For Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the minister said, a power subsidy programme would only cost Rs8bn.

Published in Dawn, August 24th, 2024