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MARCH
2009
ISSUES:
The
‘mansion’ that Parveen built
THE
Sindh minister for katchi abadis observed recently that it was essential
to provide ‘affordable’ housing to the poor on a timely basis to
make the land mafia go out of business. Correct, but impractical.
The honourable minister obviously has no inkling about how costly an
activity house-building is, how limited the government’s resources
are, how acute the housing shortage is and what poverty means. For the
poor, hapless victims of the land mafia, the officially ‘affordable’
is actually unaffordable.
Others know even less. On assuming office, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza
Gilani had announced that his government would build one million houses
for Rs40bn. Obviously a reality check is called for.
It is estimated that Pakistan needs seven million houses to provide
homes to the homeless. Every year the backlog increases by 500,000. How
far will one million houses take us? Tasneem Siddiqi, who retired a few
years ago as director general of the Sindh Katchi Abadis Authority and
now runs an NGO focusing on shelter, is among the most informed men in
the country on low-cost housing. He says the minimum that the prime
minister’s housing scheme would cost is Rs500bn. Small wonder it
remains an empty promise.
It is time the government adopted a more down-to-earth approach and
provided land rather than houses. Once the poor have the land they know
how to generate resources and build their homes incrementally, at an
affordable price.
Take the case of Parveen, a mother of five and a domestic worker. Tired
of the demands made by her landlord, Parveen decided to acquire her own
house. She purchased a 100-square yard plot in one of the ‘unregularised’
katchi abadis of Karachi for which she paid the ‘owner’ an inflated
price of Rs220,000 in two installments (raised from her savings,
donations and interest-free loans from well-wishers). As soon as she got
possession of the land, Parveen moved there and has ever since been
building her home in bits and pieces.
She is the proud owner of an unpainted, unplastered room with a roof
that leaks when it rains. But for Parveen this is her mansion. It is
upgraded as and when possible.
If the state had provided land to Parveen at a nominal price her home
would have been complete by now. The land would have been in a ‘regularised’
area with utilities provided according to plan. Ownership would have
been secure. The building cost would be lower because the likes of
Parveen do not hire the services of contractors and builders. Their
family provides free labour. It is as simple as that. Yet the government
gives no choice to the 74 per cent of the population subsisting on less
than two dollars a day.
Unsurprisingly, shelter has emerged as a sensitive issue in politics.
People are denied land even though it is around in abundance and a
citizen’s right to ‘adequate housing’ is universally recognised.
The PPP itself owes its meteoric rise to power in the early 1970s to its
promise of ‘roti, kapra aur makan’.
And still the government has no clue about how to meet this need. More
than that, it lacks the will to tackle the land mafia which is a
formidable force. Since the state refuses to act, land-grabbers fill the
vacuum with the state becoming an accomplice in this unlawful activity
courtesy the police, local body functionaries and revenue department
officials who connive with the land mafia to steal state land and sell
it unlawfully to those who desperately need it.
It is a myth that the poor are the beneficiaries of land-grabbing. The
fact is that the poor get possession of land at a heavy price but
without ownership rights. They can be evicted any day and this is
happening all the time.
Tasneem Siddiqi is of the firm belief that the state can provide land to
the poor while ensuring that the land mafia doesn’t benefit. With a
reputation of being one of the most honest bureaucrats of his day, as
the director general of the Hyderabad Development Authority in the
1990s, Siddiqi demonstrated this in his Khuda ki Basti scheme. To ensure
that the beneficiaries were the poor, the allottees were not given legal
title to the land until they had settled there and built their homes.
The situation has now worsened. Previously, dalals posed a threat as
they nibbled off bits and pieces of 50 acres. Now political parties have
also entered the business of land-grabbing, and with their approval,
chunks of hundreds of acres disappear overnight, reportedly with the
cooperation of the Board of Revenue. Nothing has changed for the poor
except the seller.
Living conditions have also deteriorated. People have tried to work
round the problem by encouraging katchi abadi dwellers to improve civic
infrastructure in their localities on a self-help basis. This principle
governs the working of the Orangi Pilot Project founded by Dr Akhtar
Hameed Khan in 1981. Now Father Jorge Anzorena, an Argentine by birth,
goes a step further. He believes the key to success lies in networking
and management. An architect by training, Father Jorge travels all over
Southeast Asia mobilising the poor to organise themselves to improve
their lives.
Under his guidance, squatters in scattered settlements in India,
Thailand and the Philippines have linked up at a countrywide level. Thus
they have managed to resist evictions — the biggest nightmare of a
katchi abadi dweller given the absence of title to the land. They have
also undertaken work on infrastructure projects.
According to Father Jorge, when people are involved in their own lives
they become active. Once they are active they begin to think. This is
what is needed. In Pakistan, this joining of hands at the national level
is missing.
After Father Jorge gave an illuminating lecture to a crowd of housing
NGO activists at the Urban Resource Centre (Karachi), a senior PPP
leader who was present there commented, “He has privatised this
business of low-cost housing and excluded the government from it.”
Given the government’s failure to provide makan to the poor, isn’t
Father Jorge’s approach the best one?
(By
Zubeida Mustafa, Dawn-7, 25/03/2009)
‘8,000
acres of amenity plots have been occupied in Karachi’
Eminent architect and town planner Arif Hasan made the startling
disclosure that 8,000 acres of amenity plots, including a large number
of parks, have been occupied in the metropolis between 1986-87 and
2006-07.
Delivering a lecture on “Karachi - The Evolution of the City” at the
University of Karachi (KU), under the aegis of the KU General History
Department, Hasan said that 50.5 per cent of city’s population lives
below the poverty line, adding that the poor were being pushed out of
the city increasingly “and eight people are being forced to live in
one room”. He said 75 per cent of the residents of Karachi work in the
informal sector, the unemployment rate in the city has reached to the
tune of 17.56 per cent, and hawkers in Saddar alone pay Rs12 million as
“Bhatta” (protection money or extortion) every month. No other city
has changed like Karachi, Hasan said, adding that Karachi became a
high-density, multi-ethnic and multi-class city after the creation of
Pakistan in 1947 when it absorbed the influx of immigrants from India
and paved the way for the flowering of a nascent culture. “There was a
time when writers and painters existed in Muhajir Colony along with
working class people,” he mentioned. “Karachi’s old city has one
of the most beautiful colonial architecture.”
The evolution of Karachi goes back to the 18th Century. “The
importance of the city is essentially due to its harbour which has
attracted people for centuries,” he said. Before the modern Karachi
Port was established, there was another port called Kharak Bandar in Hub
in the vicinity of Karachi but in 1729, it got silted up after heavy
rains. Then came a “fortified settlement” on 35 acres in Karachi in
Kharadar and Mithadar. “The history of Karachi, however, goes back to
ancient times because there is a temple of Mahadev in Clifton that has
been mentioned in Mahabharta,” he said. “Then we have Ram Bagh (now
Aram Bagh) and it is said it was named so because Ram and Sita spent a
night there”.
Hasan said Karachi has at least 14 names and within the city there are
lots of pre-British shrines indicating that there were settlements here
even before the arrival of colonialists. He pointed that Britain
occupied Karachi essentially to stop the Russians from having access to
warm waters and the city became the centre of military activity after
its annexation. He said after the occupation there was development of
port and railways. In 1868, Karachi became the largest exporter of wheat
and cotton in India. In 1901-11 the major Punjab-Sindh irrigation
schemes were completed and in 1914-22 Karachi became the headquarters
for British intervention in Central Asia while in 1924 it had the first
airport in India, he added.
Much of the earlier buildings, such as old fort of Manora, are
pre-British and old quarters still exist as “Thanas”. The first
major intervention in the city was made in 1921 when its expansion took
place and Parsi Colony and Frere Road were developed. In 1947, a tramway
was linked to all parts of the city. In 1947, Karachi’s population was
merely 450,000 but it shot up to 1,137,000 in 1951.
In 1952 the government invited a Swedish firm to build a capital in
Karachi and it planned a university as it exists today. However, there
was student agitation in 1953 that “toppled three governments”. The
student agitation of 1953 had a very great impact on planning. In 1958,
after General Ayub Khan staged a coup, the services of a Greek planner
were hired for Karachi’s re-settlement plan and two satellite colonies
namely New Karachi and Korangi were established, he said.
As a result of the establishment of satellite colonies, Saddar became a
transit point for transportation and its degradation started. Thereafter
Karachi Master Plan 1975-85 came into being and it was “a superb plan
and dealt with every thing” but was put on hold in 1977 due to
political upheaval. “Had that plan been implemented, we would have
been living in a quite different city,” he remarked.
In 2000 came another Karachi Development Plan whose preparation cost a
hefty Rs470 million. The plan was prepared at a time when Karachi’s
civic needs were being taken care of by the informal sector and the plan
was never approved officially.
Hasan said that unfortunately, the politics of Pakistan, especially that
of Karachi, were built on the premise that the city have a strategic
location. “Only people’s resistance can bring about a change,” he
remarked. He said that the Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) was going to
help but it would cater to the needs of only two per cent of the
population and should be converted into a bus-way. He disclosed that 78
per cent of KCR track has been occupied by formal sector, including
buildings such as the “Awami Markaz.”
(The
News, 25/03/2009)
Bulk
of ‘infrastructure tax’ to be collected from middle class
The
city district government plans to generate the bulk of revenue from a
newly imposed tax from people living in smaller houses – the lower
middle to middle class – in the city, said an official.
Speaking
at a meeting organised by the Urban Resource Centre to discuss the
imposition of the Public Utility Charges for Municipal Services, the
Executive District Officer of the city government’s municipal services
department, Masood Alam, said that the major chunk of the planned income
of Rs3.5 billion to be generated from the new tax would be earned from
people living in houses located on plots of 80 square yards or 120
square yards. Responding to questions regarding the sudden imposition of
the tax, he asserted that the process had been completely legal. He said
that first the proposal was printed in newspapers and objections were
sought, but nobody responded. He added that though it was not required,
the city government again called for objections through newspapers and
this time some responses came in. After evaluating the
objections/responses from the people, the proposal was made and passed
through the city council, after which it was notified and now the bills
were being sent for recovery, he said. He said that the bills had been
prepared by using the water board’s billing data, but wherever there
were some discrepancies – like the size of the plot, etc – people
could bring these bills to the office and have them corrected. He said
that the tax had been imposed on people living in apartments as well, at
a rate of Re1 per square foot of covered area. He added that bills had
been issued to these residents as well.
Explaining
the reason for the imposition of the controversial tax, Mr Alam said
that while the CDGK sometimes received funding from the federal
government or other sources, it needed a steady stream of revenue to
maintain its projects, and this was why the new tax was imposed.
In
reply to a question, he said that the money generated through the tax
would be used for the maintenance of hospitals, roads, flyovers,
bridges, parks, playgrounds, garbage collection and disposal, etc. He
said that the city government was spending over Rs100 on every tonne of
garbage collected in the city and sent to a landfill site, adding that
over 8,000 tonnes of solid waste were generated in the city every day.
In
response to another question regarding how the tax would be recovered,
as other utilities were able to disconnect services on non-payment of
bills, Mr Alam said that if bills were not paid, the dues would be
recovered as land revenue, and the properties of defaulters would be
attached, with cases being registered against them in court.
‘Elite
area citizens complaining, others paying’
He
said that people had been coming to him with their objections or
complaints, but he was surprised to see that some of the people living
in the elite localities used rather unsavoury language when talking
about the new tax and the tax collectors. He added that most of the
complainants from low-income localities had approached the office for
corrections to the record of their plot size, but none of them had
refused to pay. He said that residents of Gulshan Town followed by North
Nazimabad and Shah Faisal Towns had paid most of the tax. Rs30 million
had been collected as of March 15, he said. In reply to another question
regarding the fact that the city government only has direct jurisdiction
over approximately 30 per cent of Karachi, Mr Alam said that as was the
case with the water board, the other agencies which control land are
being charged as bulk consumers, and it is up to them to collect the tax
from individuals in their areas.
Responding
to a complaint that many people had suffered due to the building of
flyovers and other construction projects, with some reporting sickness
due to dust, and others saying their vehicles were damaged during road
construction, the EDO said these people were welcome to submit claims to
the CDGK. If their claims were found valid after evaluation, he said
compensation would be paid, as has been done many times in the past.
Responding to a question about whether any other city government in the
country had imposed such a tax on citizens, he said that he was not
aware if others had imposed such taxes or not. Besides, he said, each
city government has to deal with its own problems and the relevant laws
give powers to the city governments to impose taxes in their respective
jurisdictions.
It
may be recalled that the CDGK has imposed the Public Utility Charges for
Municipal Services which range between Rs70 and Rs800 per month on
houses, depending on their plot sizes. On apartments the tax is charged
at a flat rate of Re1 per square foot. For commercial areas, the tax is
Re1 per square foot. For industrial and commercial plots, the tax is
from Rs500 to Rs5,000 according to plot size and on amenities/industrial
plots it is from Rs500 to Rs2,000 according to plot size.
Many
among the audience at the URC-organised event criticised the CDGK for
“not providing facilities” – including clean water, efficient
sewerage system etc – but charging citizens. They said that funds
generated from this new tax would also be wasted without bringing about
any change or improvement in the quality of the lives of citizens.
Zahid
Farooq of the URC and others also spoke at the event.
(Daily
Dawn, 18/03/2009)
Regularisation
of Goths/Katchi Abadies
Sindh
government declares 4,000 Dehs as 'rural areas'
The
Sindh government has declared over 4,000 out of a total 5,600 Dehs as
rural areas including 53 in Karachi to regularise more than 25,000 Goths
under the Gothabad Scheme. In this regard, a notification has been
issued under the Sindh Gothabad Scheme Amendment Act 2008, official
sources at the Board of Revenue told Business Recorder.
Under this Act, more than 4,000 goths of all 23 districts of the
province would be regularised. Prior to the Sindh Local Government
Ordinance (SLGO) 2001, the administration was working under Local
Government Act 1979, they said, adding that the rural as well as urban
areas were declared separate.
After the implementation of SLGO, they said, the entire province was
declared as the urban area and rules and regulation of urban development
schemes were implemented. Similarly, Karachi came under City District
Government Karachi (CDGK) and the rules of city government, Karachi
Building Control Authority (KBCA) and town administration were imposed
on it due to which no Goth in the city could be regularised, officials
pointed out. They say all those Goths, established after 1985, could
only be regularised under the rules of the Sindh Land Colonisation Act
1912. Last year, the Sindh Assembly had made amendments to Sindh
Gothabad Housing Scheme Act 1987 and authorised the provincial
administration to declare any Deh as rural areas, they maintained.
"All Dehs of Karachi who are included in the district council have
been notified, except Dehs of previous town committee Gujro and four
Dehs of Korangi", they said but did not give reasons that why these
parts have been not included in the scheme. The officials at Sindh
Gothabad Scheme said some 24,000 goths of the province have been
registered under the scheme till 1996, which will be regularised in the
first phase. After this, the survey of newly established Goths and
Katchi Abadies will be carried out. The residents of the Goths will be
charged Rs 5 per square yard so that they could be provided with rights
of ownership, they added.
(By
AFTAB CHANNA, Business Recorder, 17/02/2009)
SKAA,
BoR in row over goths, katchi abadis control
A
rivalry has started between Board of Revenue (BoR) and Sindh Katchi
Abadis Authority (SKAA) for getting maximum number of goths and katchi
abadis under their control for generation of revenue. Reacting on the
decision, which was taken by provincial government for authorising Board
of Revenue (BoR) as another land regulatory authority in Sindh. SKAA
starts planning to devise a strategy to achieve maximum number of katchi
abadis, source at SKAA told Business Recorder. They said that the
department is preparing a summary to address Chief Minister, Sindh, Syed
Qaim Ali Shah for extending of SKAAs cut of date from 1987 to 2004 for
regularising maximum goths and katchi abadis of urban areas of Sindh.
The department would try to achieve maximum abadis of province in Land
Grant Policy (LGP) 2009, they said. Syed Qaim Ali Shah called officials
of SKAA and BoR to discuss problems of both land regulatory authorities
and accepted that regularising katchi abadis is the only right to SKAA
that was formed to grant lease katchi abadis of urban areas. "CM
directed for preparing a bill to present before Sindh Assembly for
extending SKAAs cut of date", they said. They said that the
provincial government has given land regulatory authority to BoR for
regularisation of katchi abadis of urban areas of Sindh without
preparing working plan and currently BoR is working on principles of
SKAA and even could not develop its own policies for regularising katchi
abadis. Detecting irregularities in working of BoR during land
regularisation process, they said that the authority is giving lease to
the people of different zones at fix rate, which is illegal. They said,
"BoR is regularising katchi abadis that are situated on some prime
lands of the metropolis at zone-IV rates. They said that SKAA had
introduced zoning system and started leasing process according this
system at different rates according to the area but due to fix rate of
BoR for registering katchi abadis, provincial government is likely to
miss the target of generation of revenue by regularising these katchi
abadis.
Besides, fixing same rate for regularising katchi abadis of all six
zones, BoR could not develop a clear policy related to auction of vacant
plots, they said adding that due to which many vacant plots situated at
some prime lands were given to some influential for getting favour in
future. They said that BoR has not developed a comprehensive strategy to
regularise religious places, including masajeeds, imambargahs, madaris
and churches and transfer of ownership rights. They alleged that BoR has
given authority to District Revenue Officer (DOR) for transfer of
ownership rights due to which many religious places were handed over to
agents of land mafia.
They urged that there is a dire need that BoR devise a comprehensive
strategy and develop its own policy for regularisation of goths and
katchi abadis for making distinction in working two different land
regulatory authorities.
(By
AAMIR MAJEED, Business Recorder, 19/03/2009)
Environment
degradation causes huge economic losses to Pakistan
Environment
degradation, a major cause of poverty, costs the country around 6
percent of GDP, equal to about Rs 365 billion annually and taking its
toll on the poor disproportionately. The most significant causes of
environmental damage in Pakistan include illness and premature mortality
caused by indoor and outdoor air pollution and lead exposure, which
represent almost 50pc of the total damage cost, according to the Finance
Ministry.
Environment related factors cause roughly one third of all children
mortality in Pakistan, the highest arte in south Asia. Diseases like
Diarrhoea and typhoid caused by inadequate water supply, sanitation and
hygiene are other significant types of environmental damage that makes
up about 30 percent of the cost of environmental damages. The remaining
20 percent of the total cost results from reduced agricultural
productivity due to soil degradation, particularly salinization,
erosion, and water logging, which has a drastic affect on the
livelihoods of people of the rural areas. Pakistan’s institutional
environmental framework has evolved since the adoption of the Pakistan
Environmental Protection Ordinance in 1983. Currently, the National
Environmental Policy (NEP) of 2005 constitutes the government’s
overarching strategy for achieving the goals of sustainable development.
However, NEP implementation and enforcement of environmental regulations
has been slow as evident from the dismal environmental conditions, which
are worse in Pakistan than in other similar or lower income countries,
particularly when measured in terms of environmental health indicators.
Key constraints that hinder the environmental sector’s capacity
include weaknesses in the institutional and regulatory framework,
limited human, technical and financial efforts to overcome this issue.
(By
SAADIA QAMAR, The Nation, 28/02/2009)
Tuberculosis:
a major killer
AT a time when politics dominates our lives, one should not fail to note
that Pakistan is being devastated by health problems that have emerged
as silent killers. Tuberculosis is one of them. March 24, observed as
World TB Day every year, came as a reminder, albeit a routine one, of
how vulnerable we are to this disease which kills almost 70,000 in the
country annually. This is a shame, for these lives could have been saved
only if society and the state had the will to address the problem. The
300,000 new cases diagnosed every year add to Pakistan’s tuberculosis
burden of an estimated four million sufferers. TB is curable, and it is
a pity that 127 years after Dr Robert Koch identified the TB bacillus
enabling effective drugs to be developed, we still have people dying of
the disease. The expansion of diagnostic and health facilities doesn’t
seem to have helped much. Many cases are still not detected. Meanwhile,
patients who start the treatment often interrupt it — the normal
course is of eight months’ duration — end up with multi-drug
resistant TB that is deadlier and more costly to treat. It appears that
the DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment, Short Course) programme, which is
designed to ensure that patients don’t abandon medication halfway, has
helped but not fully.
The fact is that those suffering from tuberculosis are mostly poor,
uneducated and malnourished. They lack resistance to disease (some are
AIDS sufferers) and their poverty and ignorance compound their health
problems. As they live in congested conditions and are not aware of the
protective measures that are essential to stopping the spread of TB,
they become easy carriers. If untreated, they can infect as many as 10
to 15 healthy people every year. Hence the challenge is not simply the
medical dimension of the treatment, which no doubt is important. There
is also a need to address the basic issue of health education in
communities that need to be taught the art of healthy living. Civic
bodies could help by improving their performance in the field of
sanitation, water supply and sewage/solid waste disposal.
(Daily
Dawn, 25/03/2009)
Need
for the right solution
IN
the backdrop of the relentless energy crisis in Pakistan, desperate
solutions are being sought to add to the country’s power-generation
capacity. In doing so, it is critical to make the right choice in terms
of adopted technologies.
With regard to the fuel used, several options are available including
oil, gas, coal, hydropower, nuclear power and renewable energy. It is
important to go for those options that ensure the most cost-effective
and value-engineered solution in the long run.
In all power plants that are based on renewable energy, running costs
make up the bulk of the total expenditure. A breakdown of the operation
costs of a typical thermal power plant suggests that the price of fuel
consumed to generate electricity makes for most of its running outlay.
In some cases, the price of fuel alone is 90 per cent of the total
life-cycle cost of thermal power plants.
The last few months have shown that one of the complexities of the
prevalent energy crisis is the high running cost associated with
existing thermal power plants. Despite the fact that there is a severe
shortfall of electricity — with the gap between demand and supply
occasionally rising to as much as 40 per cent — quite a few thermal
power plants are underperforming. The reason for such a tragic state of
affairs is their inability to cope with the running cost — the lack of
liquidity has undermined their capacity to purchase adequate amounts of
oil required to run on full throttle.
Recently, the KESC has not been utilising its fully installed capacity.
Interestingly, as per media reports, its officials have accepted the
underperformance of their power plants as a deliberate tactic to save
money on oil purchase.
Although to a great extent it is the vicious interdepartmental debt
circle that has pushed these power plants towards financial disaster,
the fundamental weakness that oil and gas-based thermal plants bring to
the energy scenario of Pakistan cannot be denied. With over 90 per cent
of the oil needed for electricity production being imported, sooner or
later oil-based power plants were bound to be hit by the fluctuation in
oil prices in the international markets.
Similarly, the extensive use of natural gas for power generation, as has
been the case over the last decade and a half, is not a pragmatic
strategy in any respect. The available gas reserves were indeed too
limited to support the practice on a long-term basis. The repercussions
are already there as natural gas has also become a scarce commodity.
While households in some areas are struggling for sufficient gas to meet
fundamental needs, the progress of the industrial sector has been badly
dented by serious disruptions in the supply of the commodity.
Going for another lot of oil and gas-based power plants, such as the
IPPs saga in the 1990s, may provide a quick-fix solution by bridging the
gap between demand and supply. However, on the medium- to long-term
basis, it would inevitably have serious financial and energy security
implications. Oil-based power plants would remain hostage to fluctuation
in oil prices besides increasing the country’s dependence on energy
imports. Indigenously available gas reserves are stretched to the limit
and setting up new gas-based power plants will exacerbate the already
complicated situation unless new reserves are discovered.
Given the unhealthy situation of our local reserves and a lack of any
meaningful development on gas-import projects, these power plants will
be unable to ensure an uninterrupted supply on a long-term basis.
Furthermore, electricity from oil and gas-based power plants will be
quite expensive.
The sustainable solution for Pakistan, both from the energy security and
energy affordability perspectives, lies in the exploitation of
indigenous resources that offer long-term potential. These include coal,
hydropower and other renewable energy; coal and hydropower can provide
rapid, secure and cost-effective solutions to the country’s current
energy crisis. Pakistan could have avoided most of these energy problems
had it picked these two resources rather than oil and gas in its hot
pursuit for power-generation facilities in the 1990s.
It is time to make up for past mistakes of having ignored coal time and
again. Given the present challenges and opportunities, the country must
tap into the immense potential of local coal for power generation. As
long as resources permit, hydropower generation should also be actively
pursued. The total hydropower potential of the country is reported to be
up to 46GW, of which only 15 per cent has been exploited so far.
Hydropower is by far the most economical source of electricity in
Pakistan. As 2008-09 figures show, hydropower produced electricity cost
less than 10 per cent than that produced from thermal power. Renewable
energy is also rapidly coming of age. Wind power and several types of
solar and biomass energy technologies have already become technically as
well as commercially viable in many parts of the world.
Pakistan also needs to harness its renewable resources that can be
valuable additions to its conventional energy base. The Alternate Energy
Development Board (AEDB) has been citing quite a reasonable wind power
potential in the coastal areas of Pakistan.
The AEDB should now deliver the long-planned wind power projects without
further delay and they must be economically feasible. Solar, thermal and
photovoltaic technologies in some cases have also become viable and
should be given due consideration. Several forms of biomass technologies
are indigenously available and can offer effective small- to
medium-scale solutions.
Thus, in order to truly address energy challenges facing the country, it
is crucial not to repeat past mistakes. There should be a holistic
approach towards finding solutions that offer life-cycle cost
effectiveness.
(By
Dr. M Asif, Daily Dawn, 24/03/2009)
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