ISLAMABAD -  Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif Monday made it loud and clear that the unscheduled loadshedding would not be acceptable, and directed the concerned officials to utilise all resources at hand to provide relief to the people.

Chairing the third meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Energy held in the last fortnight, the prime minister directed the officials of the Ministry of Water and Power to ensure completion of the ongoing projects within their given timeline.

Once again, rejecting the sudden increase in mercury as the reason behind the abnormal increase in the unscheduled loadshedding a couple of weeks ago, the prime minister directed the officials of the Ministry of Water and Power to immediately resolve the issue, and work on multiple options of power generation so that consumers would be provided with uninterrupted power supply.

For this purpose, the government has focused on adding base load thermal power projects, which shall ensure availability of power all throughout the year even during lean periods of hydropower generation in 2018 and onwards, the prime minister added.

Earlier, secretary Water and Power briefed the meeting on current load management plan, implementation status of planned and ongoing energy projects and enhancement of transmission system.

He informed that during the tenure of the present government a total of 9,625 MW in 132-Kv and 2,004 MW in 11-Kv systems capacity enhancement had been achieved in the transmission system, which was unprecedented.

The secretary said systems’ capacity enhancement was essential keeping in view new power generation, which was scheduled to come into national grid and allocated to DISCOs in the next nine months.

The Wapda chairman briefed the meeting on progress of hydel power projects including Dasu, Diamer Bhasha and Mohmand Dam.

The prime minister directed the Ministry of Water and Power to immediately resolve “upfront tariff” issues with the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) for different kinds of sources including the LNG, solar, coal, furnace oil, diesel and gas.

The prime minister further directed that line departments should work out immediate solutions for administrative and legal issues faced in implementation of energy projects on priority.

The NTDC was directed to pickup pace of work on the HVDC transmission lines and other smaller transmission lines projects.

The prime minister also directed to carry out comparative study about efficiency of various power sources, for presentation in the next CCOE meeting.

The meeting was attended by Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Minister for Planning Ahsan Iqbal, Minister for Water and Power Khawaja Muhammad Asif, Chief Minister Punjab Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Marriyum Aurangzeb, Special Assistant to PM Tariq Fatemi and other senior officials.