ISLAMABAD/LAHORE: Former Punjab Chief Minister Hamza Shehbaz Sharif has chaired a meeting on WAPDA affairs held in the Prime Minister’s chamber in Parliament.
Federal Minister for Energy Sardar Awais Leghari and senior WAPDA officials attended the meeting.
Hamza Shehbaz directed the WAPDA administration to take all measures for the convenience of citizens.
The meeting decided to fix a clear time frame in order to simplify the process for the provision of new electricity connections.
Participants stressed the need to ensure immediate redress of public complaints relating to transformers and other electricity installations.
A proposal was also presented to appoint WAPDA focal persons in all National Assembly constituencies for the redress of public grievances.
The three items on the agenda correspond closely to the most frequently registered categories of consumer complaint in the power sector. The application process for a new connection has historically involved multiple stages — demand notice, payment, material provision, inspection and energisation — with delays at any point capable of extending the timeline considerably. Fixing a defined time frame converts an open-ended process into one against which performance can be measured.
Transformer failure is the second recurring grievance, and it has acquired particular salience during the current spell of heat, with distribution companies reporting a rise in complaints of technical faults and burnt-out transformers in densely populated localities. Replacement timelines matter acutely in such conditions, since a single failed transformer can leave an entire street without supply for the duration of the repair.
The proposal to appoint focal persons at constituency level represents an attempt to shorten the distance between the consumer and the utility. At present, complaints are routed through subdivision offices and complaint centres of the relevant distribution company, and the proposal would create an additional, politically accessible point of contact.
Some clarification of institutional boundaries is useful here. The Water and Power Development Authority is principally responsible for water resources and hydropower generation, including the operation of major dams and reservoirs. Retail distribution — the provision of connections, metering, billing and the maintenance of transformers — is handled by the ten distribution companies that were separated from WAPDA under the sector’s unbundling, and which now operate under the Power Division. In common usage, however, the WAPDA name continues to be applied to the electricity supply system as a whole, and it is used in that broader sense in the meeting’s stated agenda.
The convening of the meeting in the Prime Minister’s chamber in Parliament, with the federal energy minister in attendance, situates it within the federal energy governance structure rather than the provincial one. Electricity generation, transmission and distribution fall largely within the federal domain, while tariffs are determined by the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority.
The meeting’s directions arrive at a moment of intense public focus on the power sector, with unannounced load shedding drawing a unanimous resolution from the Punjab Assembly and forming a central demand of protest activity in the provincial capital.
No implementation timeline for the focal person proposal was announced.
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