DESPITE assurances by Minister for Power Sardar Awais Leghari that the revised solar policy will have better terms for consideration of the cabinet, deliberate leaks indicate the new plan revolves around, more or less, the same anti-consumer approach, which has previously been rejected by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
The new proposal envisages the consumers who have already installed solar panels and are connected with grid based on net-metering mechanism would continue to sell their electricity at Rs27 per unit, but the new ones would have to have buyback tariff of Rs11.33 per unit which is to be equal to one-third of the base tariff of electricity of Rs34 per unit applicable from July 1, 2025.
There are reasons to believe that some circles are active to deny benefits of affordable technology to the people just to protect the vested interests of mafias in the power sector. Ironically, the Ministry has earlier proposed the buyback rate of Rs10 per unit, which was widely rejected by all segments of the society, promoting the PM to direct the Energy Minister to come up with a revised policy and he has improved it only by Rs1.33 and will continue to sell the same electricity to grid consumers at Rs34 a unit. The Ministry claims the net metering policy is putting an additional burden of billions of rupees on electricity consumers but flatly refuses to pass on the benefit of massive reduction in buyback rate to grid consumers. The mindless pursuit of frequent upward revisions in electricity prices made the tariff unsustainable for all consumers, who are now seeking refuge in solar panels. Now the plan of the Government to pay them just Rs.11.33 for the surplus electricity they supply to the grid and charge Rs34 a unit for the grid electricity they will use will push them towards off-grid solutions. We hope the Prime Minister and the cabinet will reject this eye-wash leading to a fair and transparent solar panel policy.
