Senate (Govt working to control load shedding, Senate told)

Islamabad, April 07, 2011 (PPI): The government is working on a prong approach to control electricity load shedding by taking different measures both on supply and demand sides simultaneously.

Minister for Water and Power Syed Naveed Qamar answering a question in the Senate Thursday said that work is underway on various projects to enhance power generation besides overcoming line losses.

He said work on Dia Mir Basha Dam has also been launched which will be completed at a cost of eight hundred ninety-four billion rupees.

Syed Naveed Qamar said efforts are also underway to enhance oil and gas production however no major discovery has been made during the last three years.

He said oil and gas has been explored at thirty-one points out of which sixteen wells have started production. To a question he said the government has collected forty-eight billion rupees through petroleum levy during the first half of the current financial year. The Minister said gas has been provided to eighty villages in Balochistan during the last two years while work is underway to provide gas to further nineteen villages.

Similarly he said two point five billion rupees have been allocated to provide gas to various villages in Sindh Province during the current financial year. Minister for Religious Affairs Syed Khurshid Shah informed the house that at present there are one thousand three hundred fifteen

religious institutions are working in all the provinces in which over one hundred fifty thousand students are getting education. Minister for Housing Makhdoom Shahabuddin informed the

house that three thousand kanals of land has been acquired at Bhara Kahu near Islamabad to construct houses for government employees.