Pakistan is suffering huge losses of Rs.45 to Rs.50 billion per annum due to uncontrolled line losses, theft, inefficiency & wastage of power and Government should consider to promulgate an Energy Efficiency Law to promote the culture of energy efficiency and power conservation in the country.

This was said by Zahid Maqbool, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) in a statement. He said Pakistani badly needs to promote energy conservation measures for reviving economy, improving production and restoring jobs and added that the promulgation of Energy Efficiency Law would go a long way in achieving these goals.

He said ENERCON should devise a concrete strategy to conserve energy up to desired level and government should assign energy conservation target to this entity for achieving better results. He said a comprehensive campaign through media should be launched to educate people about energy conservation measures.

Zahid Maqbool said that government should constitute Energy Efficiency Committees who could monitor the compliance of energy efficiency law and ensure its proper implementation to arrest the wastage of energy.

He said government should also announce a separate energy policy for industry and give industrial units permission to install captive power plants for keeping industries in operation along with providing surplus energy other industrial units which will help in overcoming energy shortage to some extent.

ICCI President said the Pakistan is reportedly blessed with 65,000 High Heads at various places in the country which should be used for water storage. He said country has hydrogenation capacity of about 6500 MW which can be enhanced to 40,000 MW on various sites of River Indus and Jhelum.

He said India is making huge investment in construction of dams on rivers that flow into Pakistan which should be a wake up call for us. He stressed upon the government to take up this issue with India urgently along with re-visiting the Indus Water Treaty otherwise, Pakistan could face acute water shortage in coming days due to construction of dams by India on the rivers which flow into Pakistan.