• Tap water for all

• Root causes of energy crisis

• Minor burnt alive in Korangi shanty town blaze

• A solution to poverty?

• Korangi industrial area: Waste burning poses public health hazard

• Venturing into community power generation

In June 2007 San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom made headlines by signing an executive order banning the use of city funds for the purchase of single-serving plastic water bottles, and also banned their sale on city-owned property. 

It was a part of the city’s effort to become more environment-friendly and less wasteful. With one stroke of the pen, Mayor Newsom saved nearly $500,000 a year that the city spent on the purchase of bottled water. In an interview with Newsweek, he said: “These people are making huge amounts of money selling God’s natural resource. Sorry, we’re not going to be a part of it.” 

Sensible cities and the mindful mayors around the globe were quick to catch on. Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, Phoenix, St Louis and many other cities began taking similar actions, while the City of Toronto council voted to ban water bottles on all municipal premises by 2011. 

The bottled water industry constitutes one of the biggest scams of our times. Growing by over 20 per cent every year it has become one of the most profitable businesses in Pakistan. It rides on a wave of ‘purity’, a public perception driven by advertisements and packaging labels featuring pristine glaciers, mountains and crystal-clear springs. But bottled water is not necessarily cleaner or safer in all cases, just as the much-trashed tap water is not as close to sewage as it is made out to be. Both positions are inaccurate and need to be examined in more detail. 

The Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR), the country’s premier water resource organisation, states in its quarterly report (Jul-Sep 2009) that of 42 brands of bottled water tested, 16 brands (38 per cent) failed to meet safe water specifications on account of chemical or biological contamination. Meanwhile in a recent judgement the Lahore High Court ordered the sealing of 17 dubious bottled water-manufacturing companies for working without valid licenses. 

The story of tap water is even sadder. Of 2,000 water samples collected over a period of 20 years from different parts of Karachi, none were found fit for human consumption, revealed a study conducted by Karachi University’s Department of Geography. 

Bottled water and public tap water systems are deeply interrelated. The more we focus on the former, the less we care about the latter. The bottle and tap water relationship can be compared to our education system, with differences similar to those seen between private and government schools. 

What is the cost and the carbon footprint of using bottled water? The US consumes over 30 billion single-serving plastic bottles each year, and it takes an equivalent of 30 million barrels of oil per year to make these containers — enough to run 1.5 million cars for a year. Most of the bottles — 80 per cent — end up in landfills, often dumped in the backyards of developing countries. 

Producing, packaging and transporting a one-litre water bottle requires up to 2,000 times more energy than treating and delivering the same amount of tap water, according to an energy analysis conducted by the Pacific Institute, California. 

Bottled water costs about 50 times more than tap water in Pakistan and many hundred times more in the USA. Perhaps the only explanations for this glorified environmental terrorism are the exaggerated fear of tap water, the seduction of the ‘mineral water bottle’, the corruption of governments and the greed of the corporate world. 

Like private schooling, security, electricity and transport, bottled water is one of those exclusive services that the insensitive ruling elites have carved out for themselves, leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves and suffer at the hands of unforgivably inadequate and incompetent public institutions. 

The Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB), through sheer neglect and mismanagement, is now under a debt of Rs42 billion to international donor agencies. This means that there is simply no more funding for future pipeline projects. And meanwhile, Orangi Pilot Project director Parveen Rahman says: “There is no water shortage in the city as the city receives 695 million gallons of water per day (mgd). A huge amount of water (272 mgd) is simply stolen by the tanker mafia using 161 illegal hydrants.” 

Alex Rodrigues, writing for the Los Angeles Times, reports that “the Karachi ‘water mafia’ leaves Pakistanis parched and broke, as the corrupt politicians allow businessmen to siphon off as much as 41 per cent of the city’s water supply and sell it at exorbitant rates to residents, generating an estimated $43 million a year.” The poorest slum dwellers who buy their meagre quantities of water from donkey-carts (Rs100 for 25 gallons) end up paying 10 times more than those who receive the stolen water through tankers. 

Bottled water must be completely banned, and all citizens exposed to drinking the same tap water. Our government must follow the example of San Francisco’s mayor: no government funds for the purchase of bottled water, no sale of bottled water on government-owned property and no consumption of bottled water in any government organisation. We need a massive citizens’ movement demanding clean tap water for everybody, a ban on bottled water and the overhaul of institutions such as the KWSB. The KWSB can overcome the financial crisis it is in and earn up to Rs50 billion annually through the effective management of hydrants, preventing thefts, charging all those who consume pipe water and improving its billing system. 

In 1994, the Supreme Court of Pakistan interpreted the constitutionally-protected right to life and dignity to include the right to a healthy environment (Shehla Zia vs Wapda PLD 1994 SC 693). It expanded the meaning of article 9 of the constitution to include “the right to have unpolluted water as a right of every citizen”. By not providing clean drinking water to 40 per cent of its population, is the Islamic Republic not in daily violation of its own constitution?

(By Naeem Sadiq, Dawn-7, 12/04/2010)

THE dimensions and ramifications of the ongoing energy crisis in Pakistan are numerous and atrocious. Taxpaying citizens are facing up to 20 hours of loadshedding, a situation they could have never imagined. 

Official reports acknowledge that over 400,000 industrial workers have lost their jobs and the country’s industries are facing an annual monetary loss of over Rs240bn — and this is just a brief view of the catastrophic socio-economic implications of the issue. Even more alarming is the fact that the phenomenon of loadshedding appears to be beyond arrest even in a couple of years. Violent demonstrations because of loadshedding have been taking place across the country since 2006. The current surge in the problem is a clear indication of the dismal scenarios that can unfurl in the future if meaningful measures are not adopted to bring about a reasonable level of relief. 

It is time for policymakers to come to terms with reality: they have to realise that their traditional tactic of beating about the bush by emphasising non-issues while ignoring the real problems is no longer an option. If they continue to do this, matters may rapidly spiral out of control, resulting in deep chaos and causing irreparable damage on many fronts. 

The first and by far the most important step towards addressing the existing energy crisis is the identification of its root causes. The correct solution cannot be formulated unless the factors that created the problem are identified. Any sincere attempt to examine the anatomy of the energy crisis would reveal that it has not emerged overnight. In fact, it was fostered by bankrupt policies followed by various regimes over the last three decades — although the greatest responsibility rests on the shoulders of the Musharraf dispensation. The energy crisis is a self-inflicted problem that has been allowed to reach stormy proportions even though the country lacked neither energy resources nor the opportunities to exploit them meaningfully. 

Amongst the greatest tragedies the sector has suffered were the lack of vision and the unwillingness to shoulder responsibility of governments and political leaderships. An examination of the country’s energy history shows that other than the regimes of the ’60s and ’70s, none did justice to this important sector. The track record of governments over the past three decades has by and large been disappointing since they tended to rely on makeshift arrangements instead of working on long-term, goal-oriented projects. 

Even in the few cases where farsighted policies were formulated, the resolve to ensure their implementation was simply not in evidence. Other major factors contributing to the downfall of the energy sector include the pursuance of personal and political interests, political interference in energy departments, financial and administrative irregularities, corruption and nepotism. All the dimensions of the existing energy crisis, such as severe levels of loadshedding, unaffordable electricity and gas prices and dependence on foreign energy supplies, are the direct consequences of these malpractices. 

Although the country experienced over 100 per cent growth in terms of installed capacity over the last two decades, it has not been smooth sailing. Hardly any value-engineered projects were developed over this period. Other than the 1450MW Ghazi Barotha project and a couple of nuclear power plants, there is not much to be satisfied about. 

Meanwhile, the list of blunders in terms of the dumping of essential projects and the orchestration of unviable and counterproductive projects is very long. The independent power producers’ (IPPs) programme of the 1990s, for example, could have been quite beneficial but ultimately turned out to be counterproductive due to issues such as the lack of transparency, excess-generation capacity, high-tariff structures and unviable power-generation technologies. Interestingly the World Bank, one of the key players in the IPPs programme, has also acknowledged the existence of issues such as the lack of transparency, political influence in the award of contracts and excess generation capacity. Therefore, although the IPPs brought one of the few periods of electricity prosperity, they ended up with grave economic implications for the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) and the country. Some of the other crucial setbacks inflicted on the energy sector during this period include the dumping of Wapda’s power development programme in the 1980s, the binning of the State Engineering Corporation’s plan to indigenise power plants in the 1990s, barring Wapda from thermal power generation in the 1990s, the persistent shelving of the Kalabagh dam project, the failure to institute large new hydropower projects and growing reliance on thermal power. This sequence of irrational and absurd decision-making, either by incompetence or by design, gradually put the energy sector in trouble. 

Ironically, even in the midst of a devastating energy crisis, the same mistakes are being repeated: evidence of this is the rental power programme that is now actively being pursued. This, once again, is an attempt to divert attention from the real issues and to pursue other agendas. 

The country’s policymakers must learn from their mistakes before it is too late. As the starting point of any meaningful measure leading to a resolution of Pakistan’s energy problems, they have to put an end to malpractices in the system. Weaknesses and inefficiencies have to be checked instead of wasting time and resources in buying unviable solutions. It is time national interests were put before petty personal and political interests, for the change needs to go beyond mere rhetoric.

(By Dr M.Asif, Dawn-7, 14/04/2010)

In yet another shanty town blaze, a minor boy was burnt alive when a fire broke out in huts located in Mehran Town in the Korangi Industrial Area police limits on Friday. The blaze also reduced at least eight huts to ashes.

According to officials of the central fire station, two-year-old Mehran Ali, son of Ali Dost, was burnt alive in the fire, while Khalida, 24, fell unconscious due to suffocation.

The fire reportedly broke out at around 8:45 am in the huts mostly occupied by beggars.

The raging flames engulfed a big part of the hutment and reduced about eight huts to ashes.

Two fire tenders reportedly reached the spot and controlled the fire in one and a half hours, saving the other huts in the town from the fire. The fire erupted when an oil-burning stove burst in the hut of one, Qasim and engulfed all other hutment.

Two minors died while 300 huts were gutted in Shanti Nagar in a similar blaze on March 20, 2010. The residents of the area had alleged that the fire was the result of a conspiracy of land-grabbers, who had been after the plot for several years. On December 12, at least 30 huts were burnt to aches while three persons sustained injuries when a fire erupted in the same area.

Moreover, on January 9, 2009, some 38 people, including 15 children, died when a fierce fire engulfed another shanty town in the city.

(The News-13, 10/04/2010)

POVERTY reduction has been the abiding, if elusive, aspiration of South Asian countries.

Enormous amounts of money have been poured into developing poverty-reduction programmes — often with the help of generous funds from donors — to ensure that this modest development objective is somehow met or at least seen to be met to some degree. 

The Millennium Development Goals gave primacy to this goal among the eight designated for achievement by 2015, requiring poverty to be halved from the level prevailing in 2000. With only five years remaining, a frantic race has begun, especially in Pakistan, to reach the finishing line in time. At the present reckoning, with the headcount ratio at nearly 40 per cent, the odds for its being brought down substantially are low. 

One way to meet the goal is to move the goalpost closer to the scoring line by manipulating its distance, with the disingenuous approval of the umpire (read ‘validation’ by donor agencies). Poverty alleviation in the Musharraf-Shaukat Aziz period — when poverty was claimed to have been halved from 34 to 17 per cent — was achieved largely by edict and statistical manipulation. 

While researchers and policy planners continue to invent newer methods to discover who the poor ‘really’ are, the poor are taking initiatives to take fate into their own hands. They at least know what poverty is, while the rich manage to keep their tax returns a closely guarded secret. Disillusioned by government programmes for poverty alleviation, with ever-changing and fancier acronyms, the poor have lost faith in the effectiveness and relevance of such programmes to the problems faced by them and are increasingly attracted to more radical alternatives, including revolt and terrorism. 

In Pakistan, the government has since 2002 produced two Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP), which explicitly monitor the growth of pro-poor public expenditures (although given the ingenuity of the bureaucracy, it would be hard to take them at face value). 

According to PRSP data pro-poor budgetary expenditures as a share of GDP increased from 3.8 per cent in FY2001-02 to 5.46 per cent in FY2007-08; they still are incommensurately low given the percentage of population below the poverty line. 

However, since 2008, there has been a welcome shift in favour of targeted social protection programmes, such as the Benazir Income Support Programme. While untargeted expenditures (such as food and fertiliser subsidies, utility stores, public works programmes and public servants’ salary increases) still dominate, the total social protection allocations have increased six-fold. Their effect on poverty reduction is, however, minimal because of galloping inflation and poor targeting of such programmes, as well as leakages and lack of transparency in their implementation. 

Increasingly, programmes and strategies that are based on non-governmental initiatives and involve, to some degree, the poor directly in the solution of their problems have been making steady headway as the state has lost its credibility as a deliverer of social services. Non-governmental programmes range across a wide spectrum from the reformist to the revolutionary, and enjoy varying degrees of support (or face hostility) from the government, the donors and the poor communities. 

The focus of poverty alleviation efforts in South Asia has been the rural sector since rural poverty is recognised as the more intractable problem. However, strategies of rural poverty alleviation adopted in India and Pakistan have differed. India has concentrated, since independence, on land reforms and the democratisation of rural institutions as the main instrument of poverty alleviation and social change in the rural areas, with notable successes in West Bengal and Kerala. 

In Pakistan, where land reforms, after feeble attempts by Ayub Khan and Z.A. Bhutto, were given up, inequalities in the ownership and cultivation of land have further increased, while land allotments to evacuees and the military have not proved conducive to alleviating poverty, especially among the landless and tenant farmers. 

In the absence of rights-based political movements, stifled during long periods of military regimes, a second generation of rural development programmes emerged in the 1980s, modelled on the Comilla Project founded by the late Akhtar Hameed Khan in East Pakistan two decades earlier and replacing the earlier top-down models in which village elites played a dominant or paternalistic role. 

Starting with a pioneer project in the Gilgit-Baltistan region as the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP), these programmes have extended their coverage to almost the entire country through massive grants from the central and provincial governments and other donors. 

Although created as individual geographical units, the programmes share a common strategy of rural development and poverty alleviation. They are evolved through a syncretic process of community interaction, social mobilisation and assistance and the deployment of resources from the government and donors. 

This new genre of rural development programmes is a considerable improvement over its predecessors. However, it falls considerably short of the need to galvanise the poor to wrest their right to access to basic resources such as land, water, employment, infrastructure, education and health and to press for legislative action and implementation in this regard. This self-imposed restriction is unlikely to alleviate poverty on a sustainable basis. If the needed structural reforms are not undertaken, these various anti-poverty programmes will fail to make a significant and visible dent in the poverty situation. In that event, the daunting prospect of an armed struggle by the underclass, as is currently under way in some parts of India led by the Naxalites, whose underlying impulses have been so insightfully captured in the eyewitness account of Arundhati Roy published in Dawn recently, could become more widespread in South Asia. 

Once the jihadi insurgency in Pakistan has been tamed by the pouring of the promised billions of dollars — a hope aroused in the wake of the recent ‘strategic dialogue’ with the US — poverty and inequality are likely to increase further. The marginalised underclass may then be inclined to use the Kalashnikovs to build their heaven on earth, rather than laying down their lives for the paradise promised by the mullahs for waging jihad.

(By S.M. Naseem, Dawn-13, 06/04/2010)

Owing to insufficient attention of the environmental watchdog and sanitation department towards the dumping of solid waste by industrialists, including several tanners, the Korangi Industrial Area is facing major health and environment challenges, it emerged on Wednesday. 

Several plots, streets and roads of the vast industrial area are found littered with hazardous and non-hazardous solid waste. 

Residents of nearby localities, workers and visitors to the industrial area fear that the situation, if not checked properly, may have catastrophic effects on public health. The entire area reeked of chemical waste, said a couple of people whom Dawn spoke to in Sector-7/A of Korangi. 

One can see the frequent and unchecked burning of tannery solid effluents, skin and chemically-treated leather waste along the roads and near sensitive installations, said a regular visitor to the area. “The longstanding issue of environmental hazards perhaps needs a Supreme Court verdict to get resolved on a pattern of the case of polluting factories in SITE.” 

A survey of Sector-6 comprising Mehran town and Sharifabad and Sector 7-A showed that even the combined effluent treatment plant meant for the effluents of tanneries was not following the safe operating practices. 

Last year, four workers died at this treatment plant after inhaling poisonous gas, but nobody heard if any step was taken by the relevant authorities to fix the leakage problem, said a vendor in the area. “You can see the hazardous waste and sludge generated by the plant in the nearby depression areas and open plots. The rubbish strewn all over this place is meant for burning,” he pointed out. 

At the tanneries, a chrome (chromium) tanning method is widely used to chemically alter animal skins into supple and strong leather. The technique involves large quantities of water and chemicals and so is the quantity of waste –liquid effluents, solid waste and air emissions– that is released by the tanneries. Solid waste include dusted curing salts, raw trimmings, wet trimmings, dry trimmings, wet shavings, dry shavings, buffing, and packaging material. 

Tanneries are generally blamed for adversely affecting the environment and health of their workers and surrounding communities. The common diseases due to unsafe handling of the solid waste are named as respiratory disorders and skin infections. 

While some motorcyclists passing through the thick smoke of burning waste were seen with their nose covered with masks and handkerchiefs, scavengers were found sifting through the industrial and hazardous wastes without taking any preventive measure. 

Town administration 

Speaking to Dawn, Korangi Town Administrator Mohammad Sami Khan said: “We have to handle thousands of tonnes of industrial solid waste, including hazardous and toxic, accumulated during the months mainly due to unsafe practices of many of the 4,000 industrial units in the town.” 

The administrator said he had met the representatives of Korangi Association of Trade and Industries and the Pakistan Tanners’ Association and had told them that the town administration was ready to provide logistic support to the industries if they contributed towards cost of fuel used for lifting of waste and its transfer to the landfill sites of the city government. He said that the town alone could not manage the waste problem and improve the overall environmental conditions in the vicinity and that was why he wanted the industrialists to have their own permanent system of the waste segregation at the source, and lifting and transportation to the designated dumping sites in their vicinity. For the purpose, they could hire the services of contractors, who might prove economical and effective as far as the lifting of the waste from their doorsteps was concerned. He said that he believed that polluters would have to pay to resolve the issue on an immediate basis so that the existing heaps of waste were removed from the streets and roads of the industrial area. 

In reply to a question, he said that the improper disposal of tannery solid waste was surely a matter of concern and in addition to industrialists, he would also take up the matter of dumping of the CETP’ sludge solid waste in the open with plant managers. He said that the town administration could not take any severe action against the industries, as it was the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency’s duty to ensure that the industries were not contravening the environmental laws. 

Sepa action 

Director-General of the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency Naeem A. Mughal said that Sepa’s field officers off and on visited the tanneries and issued several environmental protection orders to the polluters. 

“Legal action will surely be taken against those who fail to comply with Sepa directives,” he said. 

When asked, he said that it was true that no environmental impact assessment of the CETP had been conducted, but the body maintaining the plant claimed that it was running it in an environmental friendly manner. 

Sepa would, however, examine the matter pertaining to improper disposal of solid waste (sludge cakes) by the plant in places other than designated sites. The tanners’ body might also be told to file monitoring reports and environmental compliance reports to Sepa in future, he said. 

The DG said that the issue of solid waste and dumping grounds, waste water discharge and emission of volatile compounds causing air pollution could be addressed by the industrialists of Korangi town only when they had a vigilance committee and an integrate system to refrain polluting units from causing any adverse impact on the environment. 

Officials of the tanners’ association were not available for comment.

(By Mukhtar Alam, Dawn-13, 01/04/2010)

The shortage of electricity is inhibiting economic growth and contributing to business failures and unemployment. And no solution seems to be in sight to resolve the worsening crisis.

The reason for such a serious and growing power crisis remains clouded in ambiguity. An objective analysis will reveal that the problem has more to do with scarce financial resources rather than installed capacity, with management issues rather than physical infrastructure, and with political will rather than technical competence.

The problem appears to be rooted in the high-cost Independent Power Plants (IPPs) negotiated in the 1990s whose tariff structure peaked in the last five years. The problem was further compounded by the high fuel prices and the depreciating exchange rate of the rupee, both of which are pass-through costs under the IPP agreements.

Several Wapda and independent studies of that era clearly pointed out that the IPP policy was not sustainable. However, the counter-argument then advanced was that there was no choice either. “Whatever the truth be, Pakistan was led into a trap of high-cost power generation with a clear inability on the part of the government to sustain the subsidies required to keep the tariff affordable for the consumers, especially in a high demand-growth scenario.

Now, perhaps because of the perceived lack of an alternative, the government seems to have placed its bets on the Rental Power Plants (RPPs), which are at best a poor and expensive interim solution. A question with no credible answer is: how will the payments under the arbitrary power purchase agreements be made to the RPPs when there are not enough revenues to pay the IPPs?

The consumer who already bears the burden for one of the world’s highest electricity rates, and has suffered tariff hikes of over 50 per cent in the last 18 months, certainly cannot be asked to pay more; and we fall further behind the supply-demand curve, continue to inhibit our GDP growth, and create dangerous social volatility.

Is there a way out? The current investment climate and the economic issues do not support traditional large-scale power generation models. One has to look for an innovative solution that addresses our unique set of problems. 

A credible immediate solution to our electric power problems exists and it will ensure that Pakistan has surplus electricity within two years and power costs will go down for the consumer without reliance on foreign investors.

The idea is simple: Community Power Generation (CPG) – small, cheap power plants in the private sector, producing electricity locally, and selling it directly to local consumers over the existing secondary power distribution networks.

The CPG concept is based upon providing the consumer with reliable and cheaper electricity by taking the government out of the electricity business, unleashing the ingenuity of the national entrepreneur, providing the financial community with alternative investment potential, and creating local employment and business opportunities.

The government’s role will be limited to providing an enabling regulatory environment and provision of a franchise to sell power directly to local consumers. It will not carry any financial or technical liability, nor will it be required to be involved in any contractual matters.

The issues of investment, financing, technology, infrastructure, efficiency, management, supply-chain, billing and growth would be the business of the entrepreneur. The government would award a franchise to an entrepreneur to set up and operate a power plant, typically in the 5-20 MW range, to provide power to a specific geographical area, typically based on the constraints of the existing low-voltage distribution system.

The franchise would produce the power and distribute it to consumers, maintain the distribution network, and manage the billing process. The government would be a net beneficiary, while “privatising” the electricity generation and distribution business and gaining substantial revenues in the shape of franchise fees, distribution network usage charges, and taxes. It is easy to envisage the setting up of 300 to 500 MV local power plants within two years, thus removing over 5,000 MW of demand from the national grid and making the country surplus in electrical energy.

The CPG concept enjoys three major advantages over the traditional electricity generation solutions. First, low-technology second-hand power plants will drive capital investment down by over 60 per cent. Second, the local use of waste-heat to provide consumers with steam, hot water, and space heating provisions will add additional revenue potential. And third, reduction in transmission losses and theft will provide higher operating margins.

The capital savings provided by used power plants are substantial. It is relatively simple to install used low-technology power plants for $300/kW as compared to the over $1,000/kW cost of sophisticated brand-new plants. Power plants do not enjoy great economies of scale as their size increases; for example, a small 5MW engine based local power plant with a crude heat recovery system has almost the same efficiency level as a large 200MW gas turbine power plant with a sophisticated heat recovery system.

The age of the power plant is also not a major differentiating factor, the per-unit capital cost difference between a small 10-year old power plant and a large brand-new power plant will more than offset the operating efficiency gains of the new power plant.

Over 55 per cent of the fuel energy required to generate electric power is lost as waste heat. A local power plant can recover a significant portion of this waste heat by providing the homes and industry in its franchise, especially in urban areas, with steam for industrial uses, space heating or cooling, domestic hot water, and even cooking. Such heat-exchange technology employment can substantially reduce the usage of natural gas or electric power that is currently employed for these purposes.

Estimates of the losses in the national grid system due to technical losses during transmission and distribution, and power theft range from 25 per cent to 35 per cent. A local power plant should be able to reduce these losses by 50 per cent as it does not have to carry electricity over great distances and can manage its distribution network more efficiently, thus giving it an additional 10 to 15 per cent operating margin, resulting in lower power costs for the consumer.

In addition, the technical and growth flexibility available to local power plants coupled with the rupee denominated financing from local banks will insulate them from major price escalation factors and provide opportunities for additional business by driving demand. Secondary business opportunities and employment will be created in fuel storage, fuel transport, plant maintenance, and the like. With surplus power becoming available for industrial use, a major constraint on GDP growth will be removed and result in reduced outflow of foreign exchange. But to implement the Community Power Generation concept, the government would need to address potential infrastructural, regulatory and environmental issues. 

(By Shahid Khakan Abbasi, Dawn-Economic & Business Review Page-VI, 26/04/2010)